The Dead Assassin: The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (29 page)

Friday, Dusk

Conan Doyle continued, “The meeting is to take place tonight at a derelict church in St. Giles. We must attend that meeting, although it will not be without considerable danger. We will need to dress in disguise. It will require a good deal of bravery. Are you willing to risk everything? Are you willing to try and make a difference?”

“I abhor bravery,” Wilde said, drawing deeply from his cigarette. He exhaled and continued, “Bravery is a desperate act made necessary by a failure of the human imagination. But I am afraid I have no choice.” He dropped the cigarette to the grass and ground it out beneath the sole of his shoe. “You may count upon Oscar Wilde.”

CHAPTER   25

DESCENT INTO THE UNDERWORLD

“You’re not wearing
that
?”

“I was about to say the same thing about your attire, Arthur, only I was too polite.”

Wilde had just tripped down the front steps of number 16 Tite Street to join Conan Doyle, who stood waiting at the curb with a cab. Earlier, they had both decided that Wilde’s fine new carriage was too conspicuous, and so Conan Doyle had hired the services of Iron Jim and his hansom for the night. The Scottish author was dressed in an outfit he wore when exploring the rougher parts of London doing research for his Sherlock Holmes stories: a heavy wool pea coat and a shabby peaked cap of the type worn by stevedores on the docks, tough canvas trousers, and iron-shod clogs. To his horror, Wilde was kitted out in a bottle-green coat and black velvet knickers, silk stockings, and buckled shoes.

“Oscar, we are slipping into the lion’s den. I thought we agreed that we must blend in? Dress down? Counterfeit the attire of a working man?”

“You said ‘dress down,’ Arthur, and these are my oldest and shabbiest clothes. If you notice, the cuff of this sleeve is visibly worn and the shirt has a stain upon the collar. Possibly caviar. Possibly red wine. What’s more, my face has not enjoyed the kiss of a razor since this morning. I feel positively slovenly.”

Conan Doyle released a sigh and threw a suffering look up at the cabman seated on his perch atop the hansom. They had not even set off, but the Scotsman was considering abandoning the entire venture. However, there was no choice, they had to be at the meeting.

“Where to, Guv’nor?”

“St. Giles, Jim. And take your time. We wish to arrive after dusk.”

A look of fear flashed across the cabby’s face. “St. Giles? After dark? Are you quite sure? It’s dodgy enough in the daylight.”

The cabbie had a valid point. Slums such as St. Giles were lawless enclaves ruled by criminal gangs. Even the police were reluctant to enter such places unless armed and in great numbers. Two gentlemen going it alone at dusk smacked of suicide.

Conan Doyle had been fingering a crown coin in his pocket. He let it loose and probed deeper, finding a coin of higher denomination. “Here you go, Jim.” He handed up a golden sovereign. “There’s another for you on the return journey.”

The cabbie eyed the proffered coin dubiously, his weather-beaten face a mask of reluctance. But finally, he reached down and snatched the sovereign. “Right you are, Gov. I’ll get ya there and back, safe as houses.”

Wilde peered up at ominous skies. “Scarcely half past three and the fog is already rising.”

“Yes,” Conan Doyle agreed, “but let us hope it is a pea-souper. We may need to slip away under its cover.”

*   *   *

Both men were quiet and thoughtful during the cab ride. Both knew the danger of what they were about to undertake. Wilde chain-smoked as usual, and when he reached into a breast pocket, Conan Doyle thought he was searching for a fresh box of lucifers, but instead he drew out a tightly folded piece of paper.

“What is that?”

“The photograph and letter entrusted to me by the late Vicente. I finally had a chance to read it. The young woman in the photograph is Vicente’s sister, his only surviving relative. The letter was from her, describing the death of their mother. When this madness is over, I shall mail the letter and photograph back to her and include a note informing her of her brother’s sad demise.”

The trapdoor in the ceiling opened and Iron Jim’s rugged face appeared framed in it. “We’re here, gents. Best be on your guard. It don’t look none too friendly.”

Conan Doyle had na
ï
vely imagined they would simply cab up to the front doors of the abandoned church of St. Winifred’s and be dropped off. But as the hansom approached the lawless slum of St. Giles, they found the streets blocked by heaped-up barricades of paving slabs, broken furniture, and scavenged debris. Manning them were gangs of club-wielding toughs who stood idly about, puffing clay pipes, swigging from bottles, and warming themselves on open trash fires. And everywhere the ominous black flyers:

The hansom stopped a hundred feet shy. “I reckon that’s it,” Iron Jim called down. “I daren’t go no further.”

“Well, there you have it, Arthur. We tried. I suggest we go for supper at the Ritz—”

“No, Oscar. We didn’t come this far to turn back at the first obstacle.” Conan Doyle ruffled his moustache, thinking. “We shall just have to dismount and walk in.”

“Walk in? Those chaps look less than friendly. What happens if there’s trouble?”

“Then we shall just have to walk back out … hurriedly.”

“Dear me,” Wilde pouted. “This has all the hallmarks of an extremely poor idea.”

The two friends alighted from the hansom and set off walking. The two toughs manning the barricade watched them approach.

“And who are you two?” asked a man whose face had been zigzagged by the jagged end of a broken bottle.

“Me and him are lads from downriver,” Conan Doyle said, affecting a Cockney drawl.

The other tough was holding a shillelagh and spoke with an Irish accent so thick as to be barely intelligible. “We’re here lookin’ for police spoiz. You boiz wudna be plainclothes coppers, wudcha?” He smacked the club into his open palm menacingly. “Only we’d be lookin’ to kill yuz if ye wur.” He chuckled darkly and his friend joined in.

“Me name’s Jim,” Conan Doyle improvised. “I works on the docks.”

“Oh you work the docks, do ya?” The scarred man nodded to the orange glow of the trash fire. “Step into the light then, and let’s see yer hands.”

Conan Doyle quailed at the demand. He had the smooth, immaculate hands of a writer. In an attempt to disguise their condition he had blackened his fingers with a lump of coal from the fireside scuttle, and then pulled on a pair of fingerless woolen gloves. But they were devoid of the cuts, welts, nicks, and calluses that a real stevedore would have. As soon as the toughs saw their immaculate condition, the lie would be revealed. The game was up before it had even begun.

Apparently Wilde guessed the same thing, because he stepped forward and addressed the Irishman in Gaelic. The man listened to Wilde’s banter, sharing a laugh, and then the Irish tough clapped a hand on his comrade’s shoulder and said, “Deese lads is all roit. Lettem true.”

With a nod and a friendly wave, the two friends passed unmolested through the barricade and entered St. Giles proper: a slumland warren of semi-derelict houses, grimy courtyards, open sewers, and stinking alleyways glued together by poverty and filth. When they were safely out of earshot, Conan Doyle glanced at Wilde and asked in a tight whisper: “I thought our goose was cooked back there. What on earth did you say to him?”

“I told him I was a senior commander in the Fenian Brotherhood and that you were my Scots bomb maker.”

“Good Lord,” Conan Doyle said. “What are we mixed up in?”

The higgledy streets were rapidly filling as shadowy figures drifted out of every alleyway and side road, joining the hordes marching toward the church. The meeting was attracting followers in the hundreds—rough men, and slatternly women—who cursed and spat worse than the men—some bouncing babies on their hips or dragging behind ragged and complaining children. As their numbers grew, the narrow streets resounded to the tromp of clogs on cobblestones, spiked with snatches of laughter and brayed curses.

By the time they reached the church, the two friends were part of a huge cohort. Although St. Winifred’s was little more than a gutted shell, shafts of light shot from its glassless windows and the hubbub of voices from within testified that hundreds were already in attendance, with more arriving by the second. They filed inside in a shuffling lockstep. Unevenly lit by a scatter of lanterns and burning torches, the once-sacred building had long since been stripped of its pews and any religious artifacts. A battered pulpit still commanded the center of the nave, but now its sides were plastered with 13/13 flyers.

Conan Doyle guided Wilde toward a spot in the far recesses, where he had vainly hoped they would have the space mostly to themselves; however, the church was rapidly filling to capacity. Rough working types: navvies, dockers, mudlarks, ratters, and casual laborers—the working poor of London—filed in from either side. The two writers soon found themselves crammed shoulder-to-shoulder, hopelessly hemmed in. A ferret-faced man in a crumpled top hat and a grimy topcoat, reeking of gin, stumbled into Conan Doyle with bruising force but did not apologize. He shot the author a quick up-and-down glance and then moved his penetrating gaze to Wilde, whose choice of attire sprang a suspicious frown to the drunkard’s greasy lips.

Conan Doyle’s heart clenched with fear. If the drunken brute kicked up an uproar, he and Wilde would be lucky to get out of the church alive.

The drone of conversation drained away as a well-dressed figure crossed the aisle and sprang up the steps of the pulpit. As he stepped to the railing, torchlight swept aside the shadows, revealing a familiar face—Dr. John Lamb, the stylishly dressed doctor from Newgate Prison.

Conan Doyle and Wilde shared a look of disbelief.

“Friends! Friends! Friends!” Dr. Lamb began, raising his hands for attention and tamping down the last dregs of babble. “Many of you already know me, for I use my skills as a physician to assuage the suffering of the poor, of the lame, of the sick. I do so without concern for my own purse, for I believe in the commonwealth of man. We are here tonight to speak of revolution. Every revolution needs a general. A Wat Tyler. A great man who will lead that cause. That man is here tonight. That man is ready for the struggle. That man will stand by you to the death. Please greet the leader of our brave revolution.”

The doctor tripped down the stairs as another man vaulted up. He wore a long cape with a hood that hid his features. As he stepped into the pulpit, he drew back the hood and shrugged the cape from his shoulders. The vision of an effete young man with fiery red curls spilling to his shoulders shocked the space into an echoing silence.

“I am Rufus DeVayne, Marquess of Gravistock. I come before you—”

The rest of his words were drowned in a deafening roar of howls, boos, and catcalls that rattled the stone vaulted ceiling.

Conan Doyle shared an astonished look with Wilde. “Is he mad, coming here?”

Wilde shook his long face and agreed. “Surely this mob will tear him apart.”

DeVayne stood patiently waiting, his face fixed in a serene smile. Each time he tried to speak, howls of derision drowned out his words. Finally, he leaned back from the railing and let the crowd roar on. Then a man stepped to the base of the pulpit and hawked a wad of spittle at DeVayne. A quivering silver oyster arced high into the air and splattered across his cheek.

The crowd boomed with laughter and the drum of stamping feet grew deafening.

For long seconds, the young aristocrat did not flinch, did not move. Then he carefully wiped the gleaming oyster from his cheek. He stood for a moment, looking at the contents of his palm, and then slowly, deliberately, and with apparent relish, licked the wad of spittle from his palm.

It was an act that shocked even the hardest man, and the church fell into stunned silence. The moment turned upon a pivot and now DeVayne commanded the mob’s attention. He gripped the pulpit railing and leaned far over it, his eyes blazing as he addressed the crowd in his high, ethereal voice, a stiletto blade probing for the gap between ribs.

“A normal man might be cowed by jeers and boos. A normal man might flinch at being spat upon.”

His pale face cracked a wicked smile.

“But I am no ordinary man.” He swept the crowd with an imperial gaze. “Why? Because I choose not to be. And I suspect you—all of you—are men who would be extraordinary. Sheep need to be led. To be shorn of their wool. To be used as beasts of the field until the day their throats are offered up to the razor.”

He paused to allow the echoes of his voice to subside.

“But I see no sheep in this place. I see only extraordinary men. Men who are ready to rise up from slavery. To shake off servitude and take what is rightfully theirs. My name is Rufus DeVayne. I am a cousin of the Prince of Wales. Fifth in line to the throne. To you, I am a toff. An aristocrat. But know that I am vilified as a traitor to my class. And with good reason.”

He leaned far over the pulpit railing, the shifting torchlight twisting and contorting his features. And then he dropped his voice to a barely audible rumble that all ears strained to hear. “Because they fear me. They fear my beliefs. And I would make them fear you.”