The Chemickal Marriage (15 page)

He knelt at his battered bureau, pulled the bottom drawer from its slot – a clatter of pocket watches, knives, foreign coins and tattered notebooks – and set it aside, pausing to pluck up an ebony-handled straight razor and drop it into his shirt pocket. He groped into the open hole, face and shoulder pressed to the chest-of-drawers. His fingers found a catch and an inset wooden box popped free: inside were three banknotes, rolled tight as cigarettes. He tucked them next to the razor, one at a time, as if he were loading a carbine, and turned his attention back to the box. Underneath the bank-notes was an iron key. Chang pocketed the key, dropped the empty box into its space and shoved the drawer back into the bureau.

He shrugged his way back into Foison’s black coat. It
was
warmer than it looked, and remained a trophy after all.

The Babylon lay on the edge of the theatre district proper, convenient to several notorious hotels – no surprise, given that its stock in trade lay less in strictly recognizable plays than in ‘historical’ pageantry, with the degree of accuracy proportionate to the lewdness of the costumes. The only offering he’d seen – whilst stalking a young viscount whose new title had prompted a naive rejection of past debts –
Shipwreck’d in the Bermudas
, featured sprites of wind and water, strapping seamen, and shapely natives clad in leaves that tended to scatter before the mischief of said sprites. Befitting an institution so shrewdly dedicated to fantasy, the Babylon permitted no crowd of admirers at its stage door – an alley where no money could be made. Instead, its performers escaped the theatre through a passage to the St Eustace Hotel next door, with both champagne and easy rooms in staggering distance, from all of which the owners of the Babylon exacted a share.

The rear door
had
attracted the attention of at least one man of secrecy
and cunning. Cardinal Chang strode to it unobserved and opened the lock with his recovered skeleton key, determined to cut Pfaff’s throat at the slightest provocation.

It was too early for even the curtain-raising circus acts, but backstage would soon fill with stagehands (often sailors with their knowledge of ropes and comfort with heights) and performers, getting ready for their work. Chang found such entertainments dire. Was there not ample pretence in the world, enough mannered screeching – why should anyone crave
more
? No one in Chang’s acquaintance shared his disgust. He knew without discussing the matter that Doctor Svenson admired the theatre greatly – perhaps even the opera, not that the distinction mattered to Chang: the more seriously a thing was taken by its admirers, the more fatuous it undoubtedly was.

The man he pursued loved the theatre above all things. Chang found a wooden ladder, bolted to the wall, climbing in silence above painted flats and hanging velvet to a narrow catwalk. Jack Pfaff adored beauty but lacked the money to join the ogling fools in the St Eustace, settling to be a hungry ghost in the shadows. Past the catwalk was another lock, the opening of which must ruin any hope of surprise. Chang did not need surprise. He turned his key and entered Jack Pfaff’s garret.

Mr Pfaff was not home. Chang lit a candle by the sagging bed: peeling walls, empty brown bottles, a rotten, rat-chewn loaf, jars of potted meat and stewed fruits, once sealed with wax, knocked on their sides and gobbled clean, a pewter jug near the bed with an inch of cloudy water. Chang opened Pfaff’s wardrobe, an altar of devotion filled with bright trousers, ruffled cuffs, cross-stitched waistcoats and at least eight pairs of shoes, all cracked and worn, yet polished to a shine.

Pushed against the far wall, angled with the slant of the rooftop, was a desk fashioned of wood planks laid across two barrels. A square of newsprint had been spread, and atop it lay an assortment of glass.

Most might have come from a scientist’s laboratory – fragile coils to aid condensation, slim spoons and rods – but two pieces caught Chang’s eye. The first was broken, but Chang recognized it all the same – a thin bar ending in a curled circle: half of a glass key. The Contessa had described keys that allowed a person safely to examine the contents of a glass book – and
then asserted that all such keys had been destroyed. Chang turned the fragment in his hand. The original keys had been made by the Comte from indigo clay. The broken one in his hand was as clear as spring water.

The second piece was more confounding still: a thin rectangle, the twin of the Comte’s glass cards, yet so transparent that it might have been cut from a window. Chang held the card to his eye without any effect whatsoever … yet its size, like the construction of the key, could be no accident. Someone without a supply of indigo clay was nevertheless learning to make the necessary objects.

The city was full of glassworks large and small – no doubt Pfaff had isolated the proper one after a great deal of legwork. Chang searched the desk, under the newspaper, even lifting the planking to examine the barrels, but found no papers, no list, no helpful notes. Not that note-taking was Pfaff’s style. The information would be in his head and nowhere else.

Apart from the wardrobe, Pfaff’s possessions were few and without character. Crammed in a box and set on the street, they would denote no particular man. Chang thought of his own rooms, so recently rummaged. His books of poetry might offer a measure of identity – but was a taste for words so different from that for gaudy clothing? Would Pfaff ever come back to his rat’s nest above the theatre? Would Chang ever return to his own den? He had longed for his rooms – but the place answered his deeper need no more than a dream. Like a wolf whose forest has been cut down, Chang knew his life had irrevocably changed, that in some profound way it was over. The crime, the corruption, the violence, everything that fed him had only become more virulent. He ought to feel alive, surrounded by dark opportunity. But change was not a force Cardinal Chang enjoyed. He blew out the candle and descended quickly.

As he stepped off the ladder a giggling woman dressed as a shepherdess burst in from the corridor beyond, no doubt accustomed to the always-closed rear door providing a private alcove. She stopped dead – Chang’s glasses had slid down his nose – and screamed. Behind her stood a shirtless man in trousers of white fleece – a costumed sheep. The woman screamed again, and Chang’s left hand shot out, taking hold of her jaw. He shoved her into the man, throwing them off balance, and swept out the razor. The pair gaped up
at him. Chang wheeled away. He strode down the alley, angry at how close he had come to carving them both, his jaw still tight with the desire to have done it.

He had an hour before meeting the others, not that he cared to keep them waiting – but how could he replicate Pfaff’s labour in an hour? And where was Pfaff now? Had his investigation taken him too near the Contessa? Did he still trail her or had he been killed? If he had fled, it had not been to his garret. Was there
any
way to guess where the man had gone to ground? One possibility was a brothel. Miss Temple would have advanced him money …

He tried the South Quays. Pfaff was not there. Chang spoke to the strong men minding the door and then to the skeletal Mrs Wells, whose surprise at finding Cardinal Chang alive actually distracted her from demanding a fee for their conversation. Back on the foul cobbles of Dagging Lane, Chang frowned. However early the hour, he had never seen the South Quays so quiet – he could not ever remember actually being able to hear the fiddle players scraping away in the main parlour. Was Mrs Wells so worried as to seek goodwill from a villain like Chang? As he could imagine no person of less sentiment than the beak-nosed brothel-mistress, he had to admit the disturbing possibility.

Pfaff could have found a room at any of twenty waterfront inns, but Chang had no more time to search. He made his way from the river, keeping to the wider streets. The narrow alleys remained thick with the disaffected poor, and he’d no care to arouse either their resentment or his own sympathies. Chang stopped abruptly – sympathy and resentment, that was it exactly. Pfaff’s pride: he would seek a refuge where he felt
protected
, not anonymous. Chang had not wanted to show his face so soon, but there was one obvious place he could not avoid.

By the time he reached the Raton Marine, mist had risen and the tables outside had been abandoned. Chang pushed his way in and crossed to Nicholas, behind the bar. Both men ignored the sudden rustle of whispers.

‘I was told you were dead.’

‘An honest mistake.’ Chang nodded to the balcony and its rooms for hire. ‘Jack Pfaff.’

‘Is he not doing your business?’

‘The men he hired have been killed. Pfaff has probably joined them.’

‘The young woman –’

‘Misplaced her trust. She came here for help and found incompetence.’

Nicholas did not reply. Chang knew as well as anyone the degree to which the barman’s position rested on his ability to keep secrets, to take no favourites – that the existence of the Raton Marine depended on its being neutral ground.

Chang leant closer and spoke low. ‘If Jack Pfaff is dead, his secrets do not matter, but if he is alive, keeping his secrets will quite certainly kill him. He told you – I
know
he told you, Nicholas – not because he asked you to keep his trust, but because he wanted to brag, like an arrogant whelp.’

‘You underrate him.’

‘He can correct me any time he likes.’

Nicholas met Chang’s hard gaze, then reached under the bar and came up with a clear, shining disc the size of a gold piece. The glass had been stamped like a coin with an improbably young portrait of the Queen. On its other side was an elegant scrolling script: ‘Sullivar Glassworks, 87 Bankside’. Chang slid it back to the barman.

‘How many lives is that, Cardinal?’ drawled a voice from the balcony above him. ‘Or are you a corpse already?’

Chang ignored the spreading laughter and stepped into the street.

He broke into a jog, hurrying past the ships and the milling dockmen to a wide wooden rampway lined with artisans’ stalls. It sloped to the shingle and continued for a quarter of a mile before rising again. Once or twice a year the Bankside would be flooded by tides, but so precious was the land – able to deal directly with the water traffic (and without, it was understood, strict attention to such notions as tariffs) – that no one ever thought to relocate. Remade again and again, Bankside establishments were a weave of wooden shacks, as closely packed as swinging hammocks on the gun deck of a frigate.

The high gate – as a body Bankside merchants secured their borders against thievery – was not yet closed for the night. Chang nodded to the gatekeepers and strolled past. Number 87 was locked. Chang pressed his face to a gap near the gatepost – inside lay an open sandy yard, piled with barrels and bricks and sand. The windows of the shack beyond were dark.

His appearance alone would have caught the attention of the men at the gate, and Chang expected that they were watching him closely. He knew his key would not fit the lock. In a sudden movement Chang braced one foot on the lock and vaulted his body to the top of the fence and then over it. He landed in a crouch and bolted for the door – the guards at the gate would already be running.

The door was locked, but two kicks sheared it wide. Chang swore at the darkness and pulled off his glasses: a smithy – anvils and hammers, a trough and iron tongs – but no occupant. The next room had been fitted with a skylight to ventilate the heat and stink of molten glass. Long bars of hard, raw glass had been piled across a workbench, ready to be moulded into shape. The furnace bricks were cold.

No sign yet of the guards. Past the furnace was another open yard, chairs and a table cluttered with bottles and cups. In the mud beneath lay a scattering of half-smoked cigarettes, like the shell casings knocked from a revolver. The cigarette butts had been crimped by a holder. Behind another chair lay a ball of waxed paper. Chang pulled it apart to reveal a greasy stain in the centre. He put it to his nose and touched the paper with his tongue. Marzipan.

Across the yard lurked a larger kiln. Inside lay a cracked clay tablet: a mould, the indented shapes now empty, used with extreme heat to temper glass or metal. Each indentation had been for a different-shaped key.

From the front came voices and the rattling of the gate. To either side of the kiln stood a fence separating the glassworks from its neighbours. From the right came the scuttle of poultry. Chang picked up a brick and heaved it over. The crash sparked an cacophony of squawking. He then vaulted the opposite fence, away from his diversion, landing on a pile of grain sacks. At once he continued to the next fence, vaulting it and then three more in turn, meeting only one dog – a speckled hound as surprised by Chang’s arrival as
he by it – and no human bold enough to interfere. The final leap set him on a stack of wooden crates stuffed with straw. Whether they held exotic fruit, blocks of ice or Dresden figurines, he never knew. He straightened his spectacles and walked without hurry past a family sitting to supper, out the front, and away from the curious crowd converging on the disturbance four doors down.

He did not doubt Pfaff had been there. Was that why it had been abandoned? The crimped cigarettes conjured up the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza. Was the marzipan a treat to buy Francesca Trapping’s good behaviour? Chang was late to meet the others, but even if he’d two more hours to search it hardly mattered – the trail was dead.

He hurried north, slowed by streets crowded not only with the disaffected but also with all sorts of respectable men and women, wreathed in the grim determination of travellers at a railway station. Chang pushed on with an unpleasant foreboding. The crowd’s destination was his own.

When he finally reached St Isobel’s, Chang had to crane his head to see the saint’s statue. Screeching street children dashed across his path, as high-spirited as feral dogs. The crowd around him recoiled – first from the children and then more earnestly from the black coach cracking forward in their wake. The driver lashed his team, threatening the whip to anyone in his way. The coach windows were drawn, but, as it swept by, a curtain’s twitch gave a glimpse of the white-powdered wig of a servant. Once the coach was past and the whip out of range, resentment swelled into curses hurled at the driver’s receding head. Chang wormed towards the statue, his patience frayed by the press of bodies.