Fatal Enquiry

CHAPTER TWO

Cyrus Barker may not be an aristocrat, or the son of a famous explorer and philosopher, but his money has allowed him to grow accustomed to being waited on. It was one of my duties whenever I attended the sparring matches he held irregularly with Brother Andrew McClain to tie on his boxing gloves. He didn’t thank me; he was off in that little self-contained world of his behind his quartz spectacles, fighting whatever demons dwelled there. His arm was out, and I was tying up his glove, but the Guv seemed unaware of my existence.

“Brother Andrew,” I murmured to his opponent, before stepping between the ropes and down to the floor. We were in the reverend’s mission in Mile End Road, where he kept a boxing ring according to professional standards in the basement.

“Tommy Boy,” he said back to me at once, patting me on the shoulder.

“Do you need help with your gloves?” I asked, standing on the verge outside and holding onto the ropes.

“I learned how to tie on my own gloves before you were born. What’s got your master’s blood up?”

“He didn’t tell you? Nightwine’s coming to town.”

I hopped down to the floor and tugged once on the string attached to the clapper of a bell, causing it to clang. I had not so much as turned around when the two men met and began trading blows. Looking over my shoulder, I saw that Barker had crossed the canvas and engaged the missionary to Darkest England in his own corner.

There was a smile on Andrew’s lips even after a punch to his jaw rocked his head back. Not so Barker, who looked grim and determined. Having attended dozens of these sessions in this manner, I could state it was not his custom to charge his partner. Normally, he waited to be advanced upon and counterpunched. As McClain had said, his blood was up.

The two men’s bodies were a study in contrasts. McClain was of average height, but bandy-legged, with a stout belly and muscular arms. Barker was taller, his muscles more defined, but his Adonis-like form was marred with tattoos, scars, and burns from a rough life spent in battle. Many of the marks were from secret societies to which he had belonged at one time or another. Barker had the longer reach, but McClain the extra weight. If anyone thought his stomach made of fat, they were mistaken. It was harder than a medicine ball. He was one of the few men in England whom my employer could consider an equal in the ring.

McClain’s only weakness was the gloves he wore. He had been heavyweight bare-knuckle champion of England, before the Marquess of Queensberry rules changed everything in an effort to make the sport less brutal and more civilized. To him the gloves would always be an impediment. In McClain’s eyes, it was man’s nature to tinker with everything until it becomes finally and irretrievably broken, boxing included. After the rules changed, McClain had taken to drink, until a chance encounter with an evangelized prostitute had changed his life. He now used his not inconsiderable skills at oration and head thumping to good effect in the East End, where some would say it was needed most.

The two of them were not boxing per se, although I’ve seen them box according to both the old rules and the new. What they practiced most of the time was a sport I’d dubbed “Dirty Fighting.” It was all one had learned in the mean streets of London against everything the other had acquired in the ports of Asia. The only restriction was the gloves themselves, which limited the use of throws and joint locks, and only an occasional kick or two. I have been in the ring with both of them. With McClain, I felt like a mosquito on the hide of a rhinoceros, while kicking Barker was akin to wrapping one’s shin around an ancient oak. When they went at each other, I considered moving to another room. It was like watching antediluvian carnivores fight over a wounded prey. It was a wonder no one was permanently maimed in these friendly matches of theirs.

“Enough!” Handy Andy cried, pushing Barker back after being cornered in the ring. “I ain’t the one you’re angry with. It’s Nightwine.”

“You’ll do in a pinch, old man,” the Guv replied.

“‘Old,’ he says,” the missionary called to me. “He’s no young pullet, himself.”

It was a dialogue they’d honed for several years, verbal sparring, each of them searching for signs of weakness which in all probability did not exist. Barker thumped a fist into Brother Andrew’s ribs.

“What was that?” Andrew rasped, dancing away. “Is there a bottle fly buzzing about? Has it begun to rain?”

“Raining blows, perhaps,” Barker growled, pursuing him about the ring. He came too close and Brother Andrew shot out a left that caught him on the bridge of the nose.

“He’s got you careless, Cyrus,” Andy said. “When you’re careless, you’ll make mistakes.”

Barker grunted, whether in agreement or dissent, and then launched a flurry of blows, most of which Andy repelled with his thick muscular forearms. When it was done, both had reddened chests. McClain slid the braces off his shoulders, so that they dangled at his knees as if to say “I’ve been playing with you, but now I’m getting serious.” My employer’s only reaction was a look of grim satisfaction.

He charged in and launched a left, which Andrew blocked, but it was a feint to cover a right hook which caught the side of the missionary’s head, causing him to stagger a few steps. Such a blow would have left me unconscious for half an hour, but he shook it off and looked exultant.

“Now that was a blow. Good one!”

It took me back to when Andrew himself had taught me how to block.

“Boxing is a thinking man’s game, Tommy,” he had instructed. “It’s not all brawn and flailing away and hoping to get lucky. You must outthink your opponent to take him down, and you must be willing to step within his striking distance and expect to trade blows.”

When they quit five minutes later, Barker was bleeding freely from the nose and McClain’s left brow was starting to swell. Their arms and chests looked like sides of beef.

“Take out the rest of your frustrations on the heavy bag, Cyrus,” his opponent ordered, stepping out between the ropes. “We’re done here. I’ve got lunch to prepare.”

“You want to take a tour of the ring with me?” Barker asked as he wiped his face with a towel.

“I’m fine,” I assured him.

“Nightwine always does this to him,” McClain said in my ear.

“I know.”

The Guv climbed down out of the ring and began slamming away at the weighted canvas bag at the side of the room. As I watched him pound the bag, I was particularly glad I hadn’t accepted his offer.

A few minutes later, McClain returned from upstairs, where he had seen to the preparation of lunch for his flock, most of whom were indigent. Barker was rubbing his hair with a towel, still lost in thought.

“Cyrus! Can I talk to you in my office for a moment?” Andy turned to me. “Have a seat, lad. We’ll be out in a minute.”

The two disappeared down the corridor while I sat and looked around the room. The chamber must have been built at least a hundred and fifty years before. The stone ceiling was crumbling in places and in need of a mason’s attention. It was like Andy’s ministry in a way, built for hard work and not for show.

The heavy bag still swayed back and forth, showing dents in the canvas from Barker’s final blows. What was going on in his head? I wondered. I had never before seen any news drive him to see Brother Andrew. Come to think of it, I believe he’d been agitated the first time he’d taken me to see Sebastian Nightwine, during the week I’d been hired.

I tried to picture the man as I’d seen him last. He was tall, well built, and deeply tanned. The two might have been carved from the same timber, only Nightwine’s had been sanded and polished to a sheen, while Barker was still rough-hewn. Nightwine had thick blond hair and a trim mustache, with amber-colored eyes that reminded me of a tiger.

I peeled off my jacket and waistcoat and had a try at the heavy bag myself. It’s never a good idea to try anything right after Barker has done it. One is certain to feel inferior. In my defense, I’m almost a foot shorter, and the sand at the bottom of the bag is harder packed and heavier than in the middle where he struck it. I almost turned my wrist on the first blow. Afterward, I punched a little higher.

The meeting lasted longer than the minute promised by Brother Andrew. I had grown bored with the bag and donned my jacket again before they finally returned. Normally they did not discuss a topic so sensitive that it required closeting themselves in McClain’s chambers. My employer patted my shoulder as he walked by.

“Practicing on the heavy bag is a good use of your time, lad,” he said.

I was no longer breathing heavily from the bag, which had come to a standstill behind me. How did he know that I had been practicing? It took me a moment to notice the small dents where my fists had been. Cyrus Barker has trained himself to observe everything in a room, either in connection with a murder or as a potential weapon to be used. He would not enter a room that had no sure exit, and he preferred to keep his back to the wall to avoid being attacked from behind. Would I ever learn the skills needed to be the kind of private enquiry agent he was, or was I fooling myself?

“Good-bye, Thomas,” Brother Andrew said. “Come by sometime when this one isn’t leading you about by the nose.”

“Yes, sir, I will,” I promised.

Barker and I walked to Commercial Road and eventually found a hansom cab heading west. The Guv didn’t say a word. In the distance, I heard the Bow Bells peal the twelfth hour. Technically, the rest of the day and the Sabbath were my own. All I had to do was get him to acknowledge the fact.

“Sir, it is noon.” It doesn’t pay to be subtle with Cyrus Barker.

“Is it?” he asked vaguely, as if half of his brain were engaged upon something else.

“Yes, sir, unless you’ve got something else you need me to do.”

“Could you do one thing for me? Go to the Public Records Office and copy down the passenger list for a ship called the SS Rangoon.”

“Would this be a ship arriving from Calcutta tomorrow?” I asked.

“It might.”

“How did you get the name, since Inspector Poole refused to give it to you?”

“Oh, come now, Thomas. You know all incoming vessels are listed in The Times.”

“What are you planning to do with the information?”

“I intend to board the Rangoon, of course. What odd ideas you get into your head sometimes.”

“But he warned you off, and I have a police record, as you recall.”

“Legally, I am free to enter the vessel so long as I do not molest Nightwine in any way or keep Poole and his men from performing their duties. My defense will be iron-clad if I can find someone aboard ship with whom I am acquainted and will vouch for my attendance there.”

“Hence the passenger list.”

“Ah, light breaketh.”

I sighed. One does that a lot when working for Barker.

“I don’t believe Inspector Poole will split hairs the way you do. He’d be more inclined to tear a clump out of my scalp.”

“We’ll play the cards as they come, I suppose,” he said.

“I thought Baptists didn’t play cards.”

“Touché,” he replied. “I’ll see you back at our chambers within the hour, then.”

“Yes, sir.”

There is nothing more scalding than doing work beyond the time one is being paid, but then I am salaried, so technically all my time was his. It is a mercy that he allows me to sleep at night, but then I could recall on both hands times when I was awakened over some matter involving a case.

The sooner I shinned out to the Public Records Office, the sooner I’d get my freedom under way, so I let Barker take the cab back to Whitehall and took one of my own. The PRO is not the most entertaining place to spend a Saturday afternoon, but the queue moved swiftly and the information was readily accessible. There were close to eighty names on the list, and of course, Sebastian Nightwine was one of them. If I needed any proof that he was really coming, there it was in black-and-white.

Once I was back in the office, I set my notebook in front of Barker. He picked it up and began reading it carefully, name by name, rather than scanning it as I had supposed. What was he looking for? I wondered. Accomplices or past adversaries? He was at the bottom of the second page when he stopped and pointed a thick finger at a name there.

“Sir Alan Garrick,” he said. “He’ll do, I think. I did some work for him a few years ago involving a stolen racehorse. He’s also a Mason. He should get me close enough to Nightwine.”

“Close enough to do what, precisely?”

“To inform him that we are aware he is in town. That shall be enough for now.”