The Harvest Man (11 page)

“Nothin’ I can see.”

“Where were they found?”

“Here and there. Round and about.”

“Would you show me exactly where?”

“If you think it’ll help.”

“I have no idea. I’m no detective. It would be better if Inspector Day were here with us.”

“But you’re all we got here. So you’ll have to step up and be the detective now, won’t you?”

Hammersmith pursed his lips and glared at Blackleg. “Then show me the murder scenes. Where you found all three of them. I want to visit every spot.”

“I’ll do it, but might be better to wait until there’s light out. Not gonna see much right now.”

Blackleg smoothed the blankets over the three women and recrossed Little Betty’s arms over what was left of her chest. He looked down at her still form, then kissed his fingers and touched her forehead. It seemed to Hammersmith that the criminal’s eyes were moist when he looked back up, but Blackleg shook his head, warning the former sergeant to be quiet. He marched past Hammersmith with the lantern held high and led the way back up the steps to the city, where there was fresh air and a wide-open sky above.

Hammersmith wondered how he kept finding himself underground. He hoped there would be no need to visit those three sad bodies again.

H
e was glad he’d thought to bring a lantern this time. The air was the deep green of underwater algae. It smelled of clean rot and fresh growth. Birds and squirrels and insects competed with one another in song. He looked down at his feet sometimes to make sure he was clear of roots that might trip him, but mostly he kept his eyes up and peered as far as the lantern light reached into the branches above him. The trees gently swayed and occasionally revealed the moon, a bright sliver in the darkness. He wondered whether the children were still there or had moved on. If they had left the wood, he might never find them. He hoped they had no better idea than he did about where they might hide in the city.

An hour passed, two hours. He thought about stopping, thought about bringing Hammersmith to help in the search again. But finding the children was his responsibility, not Hammersmith’s, and he needed to succeed, to get his nerve back. He hefted the lantern higher and moved slowly on through the trees.

It was after midnight when he reached a silent place in the forest. It took him a moment to realize that he couldn’t hear squirrels chittering at one another anymore, or birds calling. The only sound remaining was the violin chirp of crickets. The breeze had not changed, but he heard leaves rustling somewhere nearby. He couldn’t pinpoint where the sound was coming from, but he already knew where to look. He stopped moving and cast the lantern about in an arc, watching above him for movement. The rustling sound stopped and the wood became still.

“Simon?”

He listened for a reply or for the leaves to rustle again, for some indication that the boy had heard and reacted. But there was nothing.

“Robert?”

Again he listened. Again there was no sound.

“I know you’re up there, boys. I’m not going to hurt you and I’m not going to chase you up a tree, but I’m not going to leave, either. I’m a policeman and I want to help you. I’m going to wait here until you acknowledge me.”

He looked around him and found a large stone. The ground near it had been disturbed; something else as large as the stone had recently been moved, leaving behind a muddy expanse of forest floor where there was no grass or brush. He went and sat on the stone and waited, his cane propped up next to him.

His mind wandered and he thought about Claire, thought about how he’d snapped at her. He had acted like a child. He winced at the memory. But he could still apologize to Claire and she would forgive him. Worse than his tantrum was the way he’d acted in front of Leland Carlyle. The man was an ass, but there was no reason to sink to his level. There was much he’d have to do to smooth things over when he got back home.

He looked around at the trees and smiled. Here it was peaceful. A man could disappear and never be found again.
Lost and gone forever.
That certainly wouldn’t be the worst thing he could do. Simply vanish and never have to deal with the emotional consequences of anything he’d said or done. He reached for his flask and remembered that he hadn’t refilled it before leaving the house.

“Go away!”

Day jumped. His head snapped up and around. The voice had come from somewhere overhead, shrill and frightened. The voice of a child. He’d been right. The boys were hiding up above, in the treetops.

And they were alive. They were safe. He smiled at the trees.

“I’m not going to go away,” he said. “And I’m not going to hurt you.” He waited again, but there was no response. “Boys? Simon, Robert, my name is Inspector Day. I’m a policeman. I’m here to help you.”

More rustling from above. He stood and waved the lantern about over his head, trying to find them up there, but he only succeeded in casting crazy confusing shadows everywhere around him. He used his free hand to still the lantern and he closed his eyes, listening.

“Don’t you want to come down from there and go home?”

“No!”

“Be quiet, Simon!”

Both of them had spoken. The first voice was higher pitched than the other. The youngest boy had less control and the older boy didn’t want him to speak. Simon, therefore, was the one to talk to, the one who might answer back.

“Why don’t you want to go home, Simon?”

“The birdie man is there!” The little boy’s voice echoed down and around Day, lost and forlorn, coming from every direction at once.

“The birdie man?”

“He ate Mother and Father and he—”

“Simon!” Robert’s voice.

“He wants to eat us, too!”

“The birdie man is gone now,” Day said. “I won’t let him come back or hurt you.”

“He’ll eat you, too.”

“He won’t eat me. I’m going to catch him. The other policemen and I are going to find him and put him in jail. He’ll never be able to hurt you.”

“That means you haven’t found him yet,” Robert said. The older boy was wiser than Simon.

“Not yet,” Day said. “I admit we haven’t got him yet. But we will.”

“No, you won’t. You can’t catch him. The birdie man can appear and disappear in the dark.”

“He’s just a man.”

“No. He has a long beak that moves about wherever it wants and big round eyes on the back of his head and smaller eyes on the front and claws for hands.” Simon’s voice now. “He’s not a regular sort of person and you can’t ever catch him.”

“Did you see him, Simon?”

“We both saw him,” Robert said.

As they talked, Day moved slowly around the clearing. He was concentrating so hard on the sound of the boys’ voices that he felt he could almost swivel his ears. As Robert spoke, Day stopped and laid his hand on a wide tree trunk at the edge of the glade. He looked up and saw a narrow board nailed into the wood just above eye level. Farther up was another board, and he thought he could make out some sort of platform, covered with leaves, high up where the trunk tapered toward the sky.

“I know where you are now, Robert,” Day said. “Why don’t you come down here? We should talk.”

There was a long pause before the older boy finally responded. “No,” he said. “I’m not going to. And even if you go away, you’re only going to bring more people here and then the birdie man is going to know where we are. We can’t let you do that.” Then, his voice softer and deeper: “I’m sorry.”

Day frowned. There was a new sound above his head, something heavy rolling across wood. He peered up into the tree. There was the sound of branches breaking and in a split second he saw a flurry of leaves and broken tree limbs and a huge black shape falling directly toward him.

A
lan Ridgway entered his room at the far end of the hallway in the boardinghouse on Plumbers Row. He left the door standing open and fumbled with his free hand for the lamp on the table by the door, but hesitated when he heard someone breathing far back in the shadows at the other end of the room.

“It’s quite all right, Alan Ridgway. Come in and close the door. But do let’s leave the light off for now, shall we?”

Alan squinted in the direction of the voice, but couldn’t see anything more than the vague shape of a man sitting in a chair under the window. “Who’s there?” He was certain he’d left the curtains open when he’d left that morning.

“I’d rather not say just yet,” the shape said. “I’m still deciding whether we’ll know each other long enough for it to matter.”

“You must have the wrong room,” Alan said. “This one’s mine.”

“Oh, Alan Ridgway, if you’re going to steal from others, then you must learn to share in kind.”

“But—”

“Shut the door.” The shape’s voice had lost its whimsical quality and dropped to a coarse whisper. Like the warning growl of a predator.

Alan moved his hand away from the lamp. He shifted his grocery basket to his right hand and backed up slowly, aiming for the door. But the shape was instantly out of its chair and had crossed the room faster than Alan could register the movement. Rough hands pulled him back into the room and the door slammed behind him. Alan felt a flash of heat across his belly and he let go of the basket. He lost his balance and sprawled on the floor. A single apple rolled away under the table. He heard the
snick
of a key in the lock. He probed his gut and wasn’t surprised to find his fingers were wet. The man in his room had cut him, but Alan couldn’t tell how deep the wound was. When he looked up, the shape was in its chair again, as if it had never moved.

“It would be unwise to test me again, Alan Ridgway.” The voice in the dark was relaxed and carried no indication that the shape had exerted itself. The merry tone of hail-fellow-well-met was back and Alan knew without a trace of doubt that he was being toyed with.

“I won’t,” he said. “I didn’t mean to test you.”

“I won’t be so gentle with you next time.”

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“The question is, Alan Ridgway, who are
you
? I know your name from the papers, the letters and journals you’ve carelessly left here for me to find, but I know very little else about you. For instance, how much pain can you endure?”

Alan shuddered. “But I didn’t purposely leave anything here for you. This is where I live.”

“Alan Ridgway?” A note of warning in the voice.

“What do you want to know about me?” Alan’s belly had begun to hurt a great deal.

“Why are you pretending to be that which you are most patently not?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Alan said.

“Shall I cut you again? Someplace different this time?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Please, no.”

“Then let us not pretend. You have made a clumsy attempt at mimicking my methods with three women recently. I was unfortunately detained and missed your first foray into the back alleys of Whitechapel, and I arrived a bit too late at the second spot to watch you work. But I was there when you did the third one.”

“You were there?”

“I believe her name was Alice. Am I mistaken? I never knew her full name, if she had one.”

“I didn’t—”

“Don’t lie to me again now, Alan Ridgway. If I decide to cut out your tongue, you’ll be of no use to me whatever.”

“I mean to say, I never knew her name.”

“I see.”

It occurred to Alan that this shape might in fact be a policeman, in which case he had just confessed to a crime. But surely a policeman would have clapped him in irons by now. This person, this shape, claimed to have seen him murder a woman, had then broken into Alan’s room and waited for him. It made no sense to Alan at all.

“How did you choose her?”

“She was alone,” Alan said.

“And?”

“Only that.”

“But was she ready?”

“Ready for what?”

“Was she ripe?”

“I don’t know,” Alan said. “I don’t know what you mean by that.”

“You did the deed without knowing why you were doing it? That bothers me. Your imitations are appearing everywhere in my city now. You’re stepping on my toes, you know, and I’m honestly getting weary just trying to keep tabs on you all. There’s a fellow in Notting Hill and all about who’s killing people at an alarming rate. Calls himself after some sort of spider. A Harvest Man, that’s it. And here we have you, tallying up dead women one after another with no idea why you’re doing it except you’d clearly like to be me, wouldn’t you? Only you’re not me, Alan Ridgway.”

And Alan suddenly understood who he was talking to. He actually gasped in recognition. He grinned and sat up, grunting with the pain. “You’re him.”

“Of course I am.”

“I mean you’re Jack the Ripper.”

“I am sometimes called Jack. And you are always only Alan Ridgway. I would say it’s so good to meet you, but I’m afraid it’s not. Not for either of us.”

“But I’ve studied you.”

“Not well enough.”

“Why? What did I do wrong? I only did what you did. I did it all to honor you.”

The shape sniffed and sat silent for a long time. Alan checked his sore abdomen again and, although his shirt was soaked, the bleeding had stopped. Jack, that shape in the dark, knew exactly what he was doing. Alan smiled and tried to breathe in the scent of the room, tried to absorb Jack through the pores of his skin.

“Taste it,” Jack said.

“What?”

“The blood. Your blood. Taste it.”

“Why?”

Jack said nothing, didn’t move. So Alan brought his fingers to his lips and licked the salty blood from them.

“What do you feel?”

“Feel?”

“What do you feel, Alan Ridgway?”

“I’m honored.”

“How curious. Honored by your own blood?”

“No, by your presence.”

“Feh. You still annoy me.” The shape leaned forward, hands across its knees. “I’m this close to ending you, Alan Ridgway. Ending you! What does the blood make you feel, damnit?”

He floated a guess out into the room. “Small?”

Jack sat back. “Interesting. Yes, small, indeed. The blood humbles us all. Very good, Alan Ridgway.”

“But big, too.” Alan suddenly felt a need to talk, as if this person he couldn’t even see might understand him, might even condone his choices. Who else would, if not Jack the Ripper? “Powerful. It makes me feel like . . .”

“Like royalty?”

“Like a king, a king presiding over life and death.”

“Like a god, then.”

“Exactly like a god.”

“Alan Ridgway, you are not a god. You are nothing, really. Not even a very good mimic.”

Alan blinked. The air in the room smelled like copper and fish and ozone. As if lightning had struck a ship at sea. “But I thought—”

“Don’t think, Alan Ridgway. It doesn’t suit you.”

“But I’m not just a mimic. I feel things. Dark awful nasty things.”

“Hardly. These dark feelings of yours are the blind impulses of an infant. You know of me. You worship me in your little way by doing the same sorts of things you think I do. Or rather the things I once did. But you have no understanding of my work and so you’re only going through the motions, and how much pleasure can you derive from that?”

“I honor you. I do.”

“Perhaps you try. I am charitable enough to allow you that.” The shape nodded. “But because you don’t understand my process, you do us both a disservice. And you’ve done a disservice to those women as well.”

“You’re here to kill me, then?”

“No, Alan Ridgway. I think you’d like that too much.” The shape sat silent for a long while and Alan waited. He sat quietly with his back against the door and his arm across his burning abdomen. Finally the shape shifted in his chair. “I’m going to use you, Alan Ridgway. You’re going to do something for me.”

“Me? Do something for you?”

“Yes. I find it useful to employ others from time to time. Some need money and have access to prison cells or private carriages, some long for notoriety and might be engaged to carry a message. Would you deliver a message for me, Alan Ridgway?”

“Gladly.”

“And then your symphony will have reached its climax. Better to take your bow and leave the stage, don’t you think? No point in overstaying your welcome.”

“Symphony?”

“Oh, yes, Alan Ridgway. I have a plan for you. Isn’t it good to be part of a plan for once, rather than blindly groping about in the muck, hoping for some clue about what you are and why you are?”

“I don’t know. I suppose it is, now that you put it so baldly.”

“Good. I’m going to give you an address, Alan Ridgway, and you’re going to do something clever for me. When you’re done with that, I’ll want you to deliver a message to an old friend of mine. His name’s Walter Day, and I think the two of you will get along splendidly.”

Alan smiled, pleased that he had finally found a purpose.