The Angel of Highgate (15 page)

Garrette moved closer to his crazed reflection, palpating the puckered skin of his scalp with his long, spatulate fingers, staring at a face that eerily mocked the unformed faces of his children, buoyant in their glassy wombs.

He reached down a bottle of chloroform from its shelf, then drew a clean linen handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket and flicked it open. Then he uncorked the bottle with his teeth and dribbled chloroform onto the handkerchief. That done, he carefully recorked the bottle and dropped into a battered leather armchair pushed into a corner. He draped the handkerchief loosely over his nose and mouth, the material sucking in and out as he began a series of slow, deep breaths. The gaslight flared in the fume-laden air of the room, making the shadows squirm, the light refracting weirdly through the glass jars in which his children hung suspended. In a matter of moments, the doctor’s breathing deepened and became sonorant; his eyelids began to droop as with every breath his body relaxed more and more, until by the tenth inhalation, his eyes flickered shut as an echoing mine shaft of sound opened up beneath him and he and the armchair submerged through the floorboards, gliding down into a soft-edged darkness.

F
or a brief, blink-and-you-missed-it moment, Soho Square had been one of the most fashionable addresses in London. But times and fashion had moved on. Now, as the middle and upper classes migrated to the west end of town, it lapsed from swank to gauche to geographically undesirable while the surrounding slums expanded until they nibbled at its edges with sharp, ratty teeth. These days, instead of the clatter of brougham carriages, the streets resounded with the cries of costermongers and the iron wheels of delivery carts. Yet it endured as a lone enclave of middle-class respectability, although within staggering distance of a number of cheap drinking establishments that sprouted overnight like gin blossoms on a drunkard’s nose. The square’s geographical disadvantages were further exacerbated by its proximity to a narrow alleyway of slime-slippery cobblestones that zigged and zagged until it ended at a narrow footbridge spanning a rivulet of vileness known as Filthy Ditch, the noxious threshold that marked the entrance to the Seven Dials Rookery.

The pride of Soho Square was its rows of Georgian houses, still handsome, but now resembling the face of an aging dowager whose beauty had faded and which now bore the odd smudge of soot. Still, the place kept up a defiant stance of respectability, although the spiked black iron railings guarding every front door seemed an inadequate defense against the forces of entropy.

At this hour, one-thirty on a Sunday afternoon, a gleaming blue brougham was parked across the street from the square’s finest row of houses. Seated at the reins was a young man of around twenty years with a bowler hat pulled down to his rather large ears. The door of the carriage opened and Lord Geoffrey Thraxton stepped down. He dashed across the street, dodging the constant stream of London traffic—omnibuses, hansom cabs, commercial wagons—to number forty-two and skipped up the steps. Here he banged the door’s heavy brass knocker several times and waited. Finally, a frumpy young woman opened the door. Judging by her dress she was a domestic servant—most likely (given the diminished social standing of the street) a maid-of-all-work.

“Good day,” he smiled. “Is Mister Greenley at home?”

From the way the young woman looked at Thraxton, it was clear she was unused to answering the door to anyone loftier than a delivery man.

“Mister Greenley?” she asked in a tremulous voice. “Yes, sir. He is, sir. Who shall I say is calling?”

“I am Lord Thraxton.” He produced a card from his jacket pocket and presented it to her.

The woman took the card and stared at it, her eyes stumbling over the elaborate typeface.

“And what is your name, my dear?”

The girl looked momentarily vacant. “Clara,” she suddenly remembered. “Me name is Clara.”

“A lovely name. If you would present your master with my card I would be ever so grateful.”

Cradling the card in both hands as if it were made of porcelain, Clara stepped back into the house and pushed the door to, leaving a gap. Thraxton could hear the swish of her skirts as she rushed away. From deep within the house he caught the murmur of voices—a woman’s, evidently Clara’s, that was barely audible and the booming resonance of a male voice in response. Then he heard footsteps on floorboards—the forceful, unhurried tread of a large man.

Thraxton took a step backward as the door swung inward and Robert Greenley stepped out. It was the first time he had seen the gardener up close—during their first encounter Thraxton had been running away. Greenley was a big man, an inch taller than Thraxton, and broad with it. In his late fifties, he was mostly bald on top. The hair at the sides of his head was silver and seemed to flow evenly into the sideburns that ran down either side of his face and stopped level with his square jaw. The glittering violet eyes were narrowed suspiciously, the small mouth pursed in a sucked-in expression. The long nose had an off-center tilt and was as crooked as a country lane: testament that it had been broken more than once. The expression on the severe face was of mistrustful alertness. Greenley’s eyes moved swiftly over Thraxton’s face and frame, taking the measure of him.

“Good day, Mister Greenley,” Thraxton said pleasantly, lifting his top hat respectfully before settling it back upon his head.

“What is your business, sir?” Mister Greenley demanded in blunt tones.

“I happened to chance upon an item of apparel which I believe belongs to your… ahem…
daughter
?” The last word Thraxton phrased as a question.

At the mention of the word “daughter,” Greenley’s eyes widened, his lips parting slightly.

Thraxton reached into the top pocket of his frock coat and drew out the black lace glove Algernon had discovered at Highgate. He handed the glove to Mister Greenley. From the flash of his eyes it was obvious the gardener recognized it.

“Where did you get this?” Greenley’s tone was both suspicious and hostile.

He had been ready to tell Mister Greenley the full story of how he came to find the glove, but the man’s combative tone made Thraxton change his mind. Regrettably, he decided to lie. “I found it… in the park.”

“Park? Which park?”

“Which park?” Thraxton repeated. He furrowed his brow as if struggling to remember. “I believe… I believe it was Hyde Park—”

“You are a liar! My daughter has never been in Hyde Park! Or any other park! How is it that you claim to know my daughter?”

Thraxton was caught off-guard by the vehemence of Greenley’s demeanor.

“I… well, I don’t know her… exactly—”

“And yet you have her glove?” Greenley roared. He had merely glanced at the calling card without reading it, but now his eyes narrowed as he recognized Thraxton from the imbroglio in the Palm House at Kew. “Wait! I know you now. You are Lord Thraxton, the infamous blackguard and seducer. And I think you know me, sir. How dare you come to my house claiming to know my daughter!”

Thraxton was just opening his mouth to try and explain further when Greenley lunged forward and drove his fist into Thraxton’s stomach, doubling him over and sending him tumbling down the front steps. Thraxton didn’t have time to count them, but they were marble and sharp-edged and left bruises from his shoulder blade to his hip. He landed sprawled on the pavement at the bottom of the steps. His top hat flew off and rolled into the street, where it was crushed beneath the wheels of a passing omnibus.

Mister Greenley stood at the top of the steps, glaring down at the prostrate figure of Thraxton, his face flushed purple, hands balled into trembling fists. “If you ever darken my door again, Lord or no Lord, I will thrash you within an inch of your life!”

And with that Mister Greenley stormed back into the house and slammed the door with a boom like cannon fire.

Harold had watched the whole episode from the driver’s seat of the brougham, and now he jumped down and rushed to help his master who was slowly and painfully picking himself up from the pavement.

“Lord Thraxton, sir!”

“Yes, I’m quite all right. Don’t fuss, Harold.” Thraxton straightened up, wincing as he rubbed his stomach.

“He’s a fighter, that one,” Harold said. “Former pro, I’d say. Didja see the way he threw that punch?”

“I more than saw, Harold… I felt.”

Harold dodged into the road to snatch up Thraxton’s top hat before it could be run over a second time. He handed the hat to his master, who looked at it askance. The wheel of the bus had flattened the hat and very nearly cut it in two. Ruined. Thraxton looked up at the front of the Georgian house as a movement in one of the top windows caught his eye. A dark crack appeared in the curtain as someone on the third floor looked down at him. Thraxton returned the stare. The window was so dark he could not see a face, but the small pale hand holding the curtain aside was clearly a woman’s. The observer must have realized that she, in turn, was being observed, for suddenly the hand jerked away and the curtain fell shut again.

Thraxton took in the top rooms of Greenley’s house. All the windows of the uppermost floor were tightly curtained against the light. It must be dark as night inside, he reasoned. His attention was drawn to the house next door, separated from Greenley’s by a narrow ginnel. His eyes trailed along the side of the building to the roof. A mere ten feet separated the two buildings.

A lesser man might have decided to go home and nurse his bruises, but Thraxton had been thrown from horses a hundred times before. He knew the quickest way to recover was to ignore the pain, climb back into the saddle, grit one’s teeth—and take another thrashing.

Thraxton handed his crushed hat to Harold.

“Is we goin’ home, sir?”

“You are. Take the brougham. I shall be returning by cab.”

“Shall I tell Aggie to lay on the supper?”

“No, I have matters to attend to. I may be home quite late.”

As Harold drove away in the brougham, Thraxton stepped up to the front door of the neighboring house and knocked several times. There was a brief delay and then the door was opened by a stout man in his forties with curly black hair and waxed mustachios. The man had evidently been eating his dinner when Thraxton knocked, for he had a bib tucked into the neck of his shirt and his tongue was chasing an errant chunk of potato around his lips as he opened the door.

“Good day,” Thraxton said pleasantly.

“What might I do for you, sir?”

“I’d like to rent your room, my good man,” Thraxton said.

The man frowned in confusion. “I’m sorry, sir, but we have no room to let.”

Thraxton was quite undeterred by the news. He pointed to the upper right-hand room with his walking stick.

“That room there. The top one.”

The eyes of the baffled homeowner followed the point of Thraxton’s walking stick almost against his will. He looked back at Thraxton. From the cut of his clothes, he appeared to be a gentleman, yet he was acting like a madman.

“I assure you, sir,” the man continued to protest, “you are mistaken. We have no room to let.”

Thraxton produced his purse and began counting out shillings and sixpences.

“Just for the one night,” Thraxton continued cheerfully. “That’s all.”

“But, sir,” the man continued, then stopped. There were an awful lot of coins in the gentleman’s hand and he continued to count out more. Still, he was not running a lodging house.

“It’s like I keep telling you. We have no…” The man’s eyes were drawn back down to the coins that continued to spill from the purse into Thraxton’s open palm. “…rooms to—” The man stopped. There must have been a pound’s worth of coins in the stranger’s hand. He cleared his throat.

“The, uh… the room at the top was it, sir?”

* * *

The homeowner opened the door and Thraxton strode into the top bedroom. Clothing hung in an open armoire. Hairbrushes, tonics, and other personal effects of a male persuasion lay scattered upon a cheap dresser.

“I’ll have the belongings moved out for you, sir.” The homeowner beamed. He had ten shillings and sixpence in his hip pocket. And all for a single night’s occupancy of his worthless brother-in-law’s room.

“That won’t be necessary,” Thraxton said. “I shan’t actually be requiring the use of the inside of the room.” He walked across the small bedroom to the window, threw up the casement, and clambered out onto the roof.

“But… but that’s the roof, sir!”

Thraxton stuck his head back inside the window. “Yes,” he agreed. “And this will do quite nicely. Close the door on the way out, will you? There’s a good chap.”

Thoroughly bemused, the homeowner let himself out, carefully closing the door behind him. Suddenly the seven pounds, two shillings and sixpence in his hip pocket seemed unimportant, as he began to fear he had let a lunatic into his house. He stood on the landing uncertain of what to do. What if the man intended to kill himself by throwing himself from the roof? Worse still, what if the man refused to come down?