To Kingdom Come

30

I was prepared for a number of things, but an afternoon off was not one of them. Barker’s hansom let me off in New Kent Road near our home, and I watched him rattle away to his appointment. My employer had kept me occupied all morning, but now I was alone with thoughts of Maire and what had happened on the bridge. I began to feel low again.

I went upstairs to read, but it was too hot in the house on a June afternoon, and so I took a turn in the garden. Harm came over to sniff my trousers, took a few laps from the miniature pond under my window, and went back to lie in the bed of thyme. I bent down and scratched him between his ears. He seemed to like that.

I stood for a moment with my hands in my pockets, listening to the gurgle of the stream and the swishing of the windmill that pumped it from underground, if a bit sluggishly. Then the strangest thing happened, or perhaps it was the most natural. One of my hands rose to form a beak and the other went out in the opposite direction as if to ward off a blow. What was the next move Barker had taught me? Ah, yes, hands together, one atop the other, with the right foot forward, toe pointed up. I was doing Barker’s internal exercises. I started at the beginning and went through the entire form twice. It calmed my wounded spirit.

“Very impressive,” a familiar voice said.

I looked over my shoulder. Israel Zangwill leaned against the frame of the back door. He had never come to the house before, but I remembered he and Jacob Maccabee were acquainted.

“Israel! Good to see you!” I said, pumping his hand.

“I heard you were back in town. That’s quite a pair of black eyes you’re sporting.”

“Yes, well, it’s better than the spectacles I was wearing,” I said. “I think Barker’s trying to turn me into a lesser version of himself. Come into the kitchen. I will make some coffee.”

“Thank you. This garden is amazing. I’d hardly imagine such a place existed in London.”

His voice suddenly awakened the diminutive dragon that stood guard over our secret garden. I had just enough time to scoop him up before he sank his teeth into Zangwill’s trouser leg.

“My word, that’s the ugliest dog I’ve ever seen,” my friend said over the animal’s frantic barks and howls.

“He’s a Chinese imperial dog, and his name is Harm. He belongs to my employer,” I explained as the dog screeched in his face.

“Yes, well, your employer is welcome to him. I shall wait in the kitchen, if you don’t mind.” He backed away slowly and went into the house.

After I brewed coffee on the stove, we sat at the deal table overlooking the garden, while outside Harm attempted to launch an assault upon the window, making quite impressive aerial leaps to see if we were still there.

I wanted to tell Israel everything that had happened, but I knew Barker would have counseled me not to. The most I could reveal was that in the course of our last case, I had managed to fall off Charing Cross Railway Bridge and successfully get my heart broken.

“Your employer certainly doesn’t do things by halves, does he?” my friend pronounced. “You may be the only man to have fallen off a London bridge and survived.”

“It is not a distinction I covet, thank you. What am I going to do, Israel? I feel as if I may never get over this.”

“I am no rabbi, of course, but if I could offer some advice, it would be that time heals all wounds.”

“I didn’t know that was a Jewish proverb.”

Zangwill threw his shaggy head back and laughed. “Yes, it was Rabbi Geoffrey Chaucer, if you must know. Some scholar you are. Oh, and if you’re still looking for a reason to live, I can give you hundreds. A fellow doesn’t have to travel far to find pretty girls. And allow me to point out that they generally prefer rakish detectives with their exciting tales to humble scholars and teachers, such as me.”

“I thank you for the encouragement, but if you must know the truth, I believe I shall avoid women for a while. I’m not very good for them, nor they for me.”

Zangwill watched as Harm sailed past the window again. “He really is the maddest creature I’ve ever seen.”

He rose and tossed a coin on the table.

“You needn’t pay for your coffee, Israel,” I joked.

“That’s not my shilling. It is the one you lent Ira before you left. I’ve been keeping it for him, since money rather melts through his fingers. He told me to tell you he was never so glad to pay a shilling in his life, and that he hopes you realize it was the prayers in the synagogue that allowed you to survive, if just barely.”

“Thank him for me the next time you see him,” I said.

“Thank him yourself at the Barbados this Sunday, if you can get away. Say, two o’clock?”

“Done,” I told him.

Barker came home at dinnertime with a look that said, “Don’t ask me where I was or what I’ve been doing.” The Widow was never to be discussed. I suppose we all have our tender spots.

“How was your afternoon?” he rumbled.

“Fine, sir. I got back to the internal exercises.”

“Good, good.”

“Israel Zangwill came to see me.”

“Zangwill,” he said. “What did he want?”

“He heard I was feeling low.”

“I’ve always found that work is the best antidote for a sad heart,” Barker stated. “What would you say to a new case?”

“Already?” I asked. “We’ve only just finished one.”

“Lad, they can’t wait patiently in a queue. We must take them as they come. It’s nothing as dangerous as the last one, however. Some securities have gone missing. We should start on Monday.”

I thought for a moment. “I’m your man.”

Barker nodded. “Very good.”

That evening, I finally got around to reading Midlothian again. I had hardly begun it when I was interrupted by a jangling of the telephone downstairs. I remarked upon it to myself, but such events are not uncommon in Barker’s household, so I went back to my volume and soon forgot it. About fifteen minutes later, I came upon a reference to food and remembered that Dummolard had baked a new apple pie with cognac and caramelized sugar at my request and it was sitting at that very moment in our larder under a glass dome.

“It is the very thing to fix the broken heart,” the prickly Frenchman stated. As far as he was concerned, all ills were to be remedied with food.

So far, Barker had prescribed work, Dummolard good food, and Zangwill said that time would heal my malady. I believed them all wrong, like Job’s trio of advisors, but certainly a slice of pie would do no harm. I slid off the side of my bed, where I had been lounging, and went downstairs, registering the sound of Barker’s footsteps climbing up to what I call his Red Room.

Down in the hall, I couldn’t help but notice Mac sitting on a bench by the door, with his head down and his hand clutching the top of his yarmulke. Mac seated is not a sight one saw every day. In fact, he is normally so industrious I couldn’t recall seeing him seated at all. The fellow was not thirty, and despite a studied manner and a habit of posing as if for a painting of Byron, he is a bundle of energy. So, one can see why I found the sight novel. I thought perhaps he was praying. Just to test the waters, so to speak, I cleared my throat. I thought he would jump up, but he did not.

“Whatever is the matter?” I asked.

Maccabee looked up, as if in a reverie. “What? Oh, the Guv just had a telephone call from Mr. Anderson.”

“Anderson? Really? What did he have to say?”

“Quite a lot, actually. Mr. Barker listened for a good five minutes. From what I gather, the Guv was recommended to receive some sort of honor.”

I was astounded, but after a moment, I thought that Barker did deserve some sort of recognition. He had saved the life of the Prince of Wales and foiled an attempt to blow up London. Certainly he should have received more than the pittance Her Majesty’s government paid him as a spy.

“That’s marvelous! Is there any chance of a knighthood?”

“There might have been, but it is out of the question. He turned it down.”

Now I really was astounded. “Turned it down? Is he mad?”

“He was rather brusque, I’m afraid. He said he couldn’t see how it would benefit him in his profession and might actually close some doors he preferred to remain open.”

“Turned it down?” I repeated. “My word!” I sat down on the hall bench in much the same manner I’d found Mac. I knew what my employer’s manservant meant when he employed the word “brusque.” It meant rude, and unlikely ever to be offered such an honor again.

Barker said nothing to me about it, but spent the rest of the evening exercising in the basement, lifting weights, and beating upon the heavy bag, all in an attempt to return to his normal weight as soon as possible. Eventually he stripped down to his trousers and boots, his broad chest bathed in sweat like a stevedore’s. He exercised fanatically and afterward soaked in his bath. Mac heated the water hotter than ever before, far too hellish for my comfort, and had heated some stones in a brazier, which Barker periodically threw water over with the aid of a wooden dipper, until the place resembled a sauna bath. I gave up completely, and left him to his bathhouse in solitude. I had no wish to be boiled like a crustacean.

Barker, of course, is not demonstrative, but he appeared to be glad to be back to his normal routine the next morning. We had missed Sunday services at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, but he spoke of looking forward to the next Sunday and the thrilling and instructive sermons of Reverend Charles Haddon Spurgeon, whom Barker considered the wisest man in London, if not in Christendom. He also was content to be back to our regular schedule, from eight o’clock in the morning to six in the evening, with a half day on Saturdays. This was generally elastic, and many is the time we left at five thirty, or worked late into the night during a case, but for just a week or so after the bombing case, he adhered very strictly to our daily schedule.

I have not always been an enthusiast of employment, and many is the time I’ve wondered why I was born into a poor Welsh mining family, rather than the eldest son of a lord. I had to admit, however, that Barker was correct about work being an antidote. The new case, dull as it was in comparison to the bombing case, did help me to begin healing after Maire’s death. It would be a long process, true, but had I been idle, it would have lasted much longer. Not that I’ll ever fully get over her. Even now, I cannot smell lilac without thinking of her.

There is a small postscript to this tale. A week later, Barker received an unexpected box. Normally such a delivery is highly suspect in our profession. I’ve heard of boxes sent to enquiry agents containing everything from weapons to human body parts. This one was different, luckily. For one thing, it came from Buckingham Palace. It was also quite small. Barker cut it open carefully with his Italian stiletto and lifted the lid.

He grunted and reached inside, lifting out a small case of black leather. Opening it, he pulled out a gold watch and chain. On the lid was an inscription:

To Cyrus Barker, from HRH the Prince of Wales for services rendered to the Crown

I recalled reading somewhere that the Prince was well known for going out of his way to find a perfect gift for some of his personal friends. I thought it a splendid gift and no less than my employer deserved for all he had done.

Barker studied it a moment and then handed it to me. “It is very nice, but I already have a perfectly good repeater, and I have been meaning to purchase a watch for you, lad. Take it.”

“Me, sir?” I protested. “But it’s from the Prince. It was intended for you.”

“It is a matter of simple mathematics. I have two, and you have none.”

I took the watch and turned it over in my hand. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. There were four small diamonds and gold filigree swirls on the cover. I closed the lid and looked at the inscription again. How could he give away such an incredible gift?

“In that case,” I asked, “would you mind if I had your name scratched out and mine put in?”

“Cheeky lad,” Barker said, with a glint of a smile below his thick mustache. “As if the Prince of Wales would send a present to a rascal like you!”