Fatal Enquiry

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I came out of the Prospect of Whitby feeling that at least now I understood the extent of Nightwine’s plan. Walking down Ropemaker’s Street, I tried to decide what to do next. Limehouse is a drab district and did nothing to improve my mood. Every building is covered in peeling paint and decay and the streets littered with horse droppings. There are chandleries, shops that cater to the Asian population, with goods from China, Japan, Malay, India, and other exotic places. None of those shops bother to put up a sign, whether in their native language or English, so in Limehouse, one simply walks into a likely looking place and discovers whether it is a shop, a restaurant, or a private dwelling.

One finds places like this in Limehouse from time to time and then can never find them again. I can’t tell whether they are for Asian patrons to make them feel at home, or for foreigners like myself, interested in the exoticism they represent. I suppose it doesn’t matter as long as someone buys the goods and the owner can go back to his native land a wealthy man, which is the aim of every Chinaman in this country, and mine as well, come to think of it.

These old shops sold lacquered parasols with kanji painted upon them, small scenes of pagodas carved in cork, paper wallets, carved ivory and jade, chopsticks, landscapes painted on silk, and porcelain figurines. Delicate-necked teapots, silk jackets one would be afraid to wear for ripping them, and paintings that make one long for places one will never visit. Asian shops are always stacked to the ceiling and crowding the aisles in the hope that one will break or trod on something and have to purchase it.

One of those I came upon had a few items in a dirty window, or rather, many windows, since no one north of the river could afford plate glass. Something there caught my eye and I walked in, nodding at a dour-looking Chinaman behind the counter. I went straight to the window display and found a box containing over a dozen pair of black spectacles similar to the ones my employer always wore. An idea began to form, and I lifted the box and took it to the counter.

“How much for all?” I asked.

The owner held up two fingers.

“Two pounds?” I demanded. “As much as that? A pound, surely.”

“Two poun’.”

“One pound fifty, then. The highest I can go.”

“Two poun’.”

“Two poun’, two poun’! Blast you! Let me see how much I’ve got.”

I reached into my pocket, extracted my last pound note and several coins, knowing I had more money tucked away in my back pocket. I counted them on the counter with excruciating slowness.

“Let’s see. That’s one pound, two shillings, and ten pence. Roughly one sixty-five.”

“Two poun’.”

“This is getting us nowhere. I’m just going to take all this lovely money from your counter, and carry it down the street to one of your competitors, and see if he feels like turning a profit today. Good day, Mr. Two Poun’.”

I was almost out the door when he made a sound like a rusty hinge.

“Excuse me?” I asked, putting my head back in the shop.

“Hokay,” he said, as if it pained him to say it.

I quickly returned before he changed his mind. I learned that trick not from Barker but from my sainted mother. Pennies squeaked before they left her fingers.

I had taken possession of the box when the proprietor looked over my shoulder and apparently didn’t care for the customer who had just come in behind me. He shook his head and waved at him with a cloth that lay on the counter. I turned to find out whom a Limehouse shopkeeper would find so disagreeable. As it turned out, he and I were of the same opinion. It was Soho Vic, Barker’s messenger boy.

Vic wore a battered and rusty bowler hat, an oversized shirt and waistcoat, an evening coat with tails that had seen better decades, excessively tight trousers, and hobnailed boots. He had a fat cigar clenched between his teeth and he frowned over it, ignoring the shop owner and concentrating on me.

“’Ello, Fathead.”

“Wotcher, Ugly,” I responded. One must know how to speak to these fellows.

“Wot’s the idea of leaving me out in the cold?” he demanded. “Hain’t I given good service? Hain’t I been takin’ proper care o’ the agency?”

“I don’t believe you’ve given Push any reason to complain, but he told me he wanted you out of it. Said you have too many mouths to feed.”

“Does he think me too young? I know what o’clock it is,” he said angrily. “I’ve always been quick off the blocks.”

“No one said you weren’t. He knew how tempting that reward money is, and he didn’t want you to have to choose between him and your lads.”

“I’d never peach on the Guv,” Vic insisted. “Never!”

“Oh, come now, this is me you’re talking to. Can you really look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t at least come up with several ways to spend the reward money?”

“Never,” he insisted, but he grinned around the cigar.

“Yes, well, we cannot all be the specimen of Moral Probity you are.”

“The wot?”

“Never mind.” I turned to Mr. Two Poun’ who was still trying to remove the boy from the shop. “He’s with me.”

The shopkeeper went back to his stool and sat on it, watching our every move in the event we stole something.

“Did ’e really say that?” Vic asked.

“He did. I imagine he doesn’t want the current circumstances to end a good working relationship.”

He nodded in thought. I believe he accepted what I was telling him as the unvarnished truth.

“So what you doin’ here, then? Pickin’ out silk curtains for your boyfriend?”

“Satin for your coffin, more like. You and I, we’ve got business to discuss.”

He pretended to open a door behind him. “Step into my office, then.”

“How’d you like to confound Scotland Yard’s new sleuth hound, Abberline?” I asked, handing him the box.

He opened it, and the second he did, a big gap-toothed grin broke out on his dirty face, not a pretty sight under normal circumstances. He reached in and pulled out a pair of black-lensed spectacles, not as fancy as Barker’s, but similar enough from a distance of ten feet. He tried on a pair, looking at himself in the reflection of the window.

“Look at me!” he crowed. “I’m Cyrus Bloody Barker. ‘Come quickly there, lad.’”

“There are over a dozen pair in here,” I said, ignoring his imitation, which I had to admit was spot on. “Do you think you can find a similar number of large, burly men in London to wear these around town? They don’t have to parade or anything, just simply go about their business.”

“I like ’em,” he said. “Where’d you find them?”

“Bought them right here.”

“Did you ask if they ’ad any more?”

“No,” I admitted, “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Gentlemen amateurs. No ’ead for business. Oy!” This latter was directed toward the Chinaman at the end of the counter. “You got any more o’ these specs?”

Two Poun’ shook his head glumly.

“Can you get us more?” I asked. “We’ll buy every pair you find.”

“Mebbe,” he answered with a shrug.

“I’ll have my boys strip the East End of every pair of black specs they’ve got,” Vic said. “We’ll start one o’ them fads. You’re nothin’ if you ain’t a-wearin’ dark lenses this year.”

“That’s the spirit. What’s your price? You know Barker will be good for it when this is over and done with.”

“Just this. You claim it was me what thought of it.”

“Fair enough. I accept.”

Soho Vic took the cigar from his mouth and spat into his hand. The liquid was yellowish and viscous, and my gorge rose, but I followed suit, thankful that I had a pocket handkerchief to wipe my hand upon afterward. We shook solemnly as partners.

“Time’s money, Bonehead, an’ I’m a-wastin’ it standin’ here talkin’ to you. See you round. If the East End ain’t crawlin’ wiff Cyrus Barkers by tomorrow, it won’t be my fault.”

He turned and hurried away with the box under his arm, the tails of his evening jacket fluttering behind him, leaving me to feel as though I had just made a pact with the devil.

As I watched Vic leave the shop, the thought occurred to me that there might be something of interest to the case in Sebastian Nightwine’s former lodgings in Chelsea. It was the only place connected to Nightwine that was large enough for the Elephant Gang to hide. The chances were likely he had given up his lease long ago, but it would be worth the effort to at least cross it from the list. I had gone to the British Museum and was left without anything to do until Barker reappeared. I decided to improvise, and thereby possibly have something additional to offer when I saw him next. I hailed a cab and asked the driver to take me to Cheyne Row. There I paid him and sauntered casually past Nightwine’s old address.

There was no TO LET sign in any of the windows, all of which were covered in heavy drapes. I could not see any light coming from within. I passed by and turned at the end of the street, coming back to the door. Leaning casually against it, I listened for any sound coming from inside. Possibly those were voices I heard, but they could just as easily have been the normal sounds in a settling house. I couldn’t decide. Walking to the end of the street a second time I turned to my left and continued on, eventually finding an alley leading to the back of the row of semidetached villas.

Some houses look very different from the back. Luckily, it was not difficult to spot the white stone of Nightwine’s former residence. I made my way to the back gate and lifted the latch. The garden behind the house looked innocent enough. There was a good-sized larch tree, a couple of outbuildings, and a lawn in need of cutting. An empty wine bottle lay in the grass. Was it left here by an inhabitant of the house, or had someone thrown it from the alleyway? Again, there was no way to be certain. The windows in the back appeared to be covered in some kind of dark paper. One pane was not covered and I looked in where I supposed the kitchen to be. There were signs that it was lived in, crates on the floor and dishes in the sink, like the ones left at our house by the Elephant and Castle gang. I was just thinking to check whether the back door was locked when it opened suddenly and half a dozen rough-looking men swarmed out. I went into a defensive posture, but one of them, presumably the leader, pulled a pistol from the waistband of his trousers and pointed it at me. Some might say the modern pistol has rendered the old blood sports obsolete.

“Oo’ve we got here, then?” the man with the gun asked. He was tall and thin but intelligent looking, in a cunning way. “Looks like an intruder. What’s your name?”

“Mr. Intruder,” I said. Sometimes I’m too cocky for my own good.

The fellow kicked at my knee with one of his hobnailed boots, which I avoided, but not the blow to my head with the butt of his pistol.

“Take ’im downstairs to the cellar and tie him up.”

I half recall being dragged through a corridor and down a flight of steps. There was blood in my eyes and trickling down my collar, but I hoped it looked worse than it actually was. The two men who carried me, a stocky fellow in a sailor’s jumper and another with the sleeves of his shirt cut off, thrust me in a chair and methodically tied me to it.

That was as far as it went. They didn’t hurt me, and they didn’t speak to me, nor did they see to any of my comforts. I was left alone to contemplate what a complete idiot I was. I had marched right here and turned myself over to them.

A very long time later the cellar door opened and Sebastian Nightwine came down.

“Mr. Llewelyn, how nice to see you again,” he said, allowing one of his lieutenants to remove his duck-fabric jacket. He slipped out his cuff links and rolled up his sleeves.

“You don’t look so well,” he said, examining my wound. I shook off his attentions with a toss of my head. “Your spirit is still strong, however, which is the main thing.”

I watched as he took a length of rope, tied a knot in one end, and held it in the palm of his hand. It was a tough sailor’s hemp and it made a rasping noise as he wrapped it around his knuckles. I watched his underlings wrap his other hand.

“Where is your master, then?” he asked.

“I don’t know and I wouldn’t tell you if I did.”

“Wrong answer,” he stated, and as the assembly watched with rapt attention he broke my nose. It was a straight punch just under the eyes, shattering the cartilage. Immediately, a torrent of blood gushed from my nostrils, staining my shirt and waistcoat. A cheer went up from the men surrounding me.

“No idea at all?” Nightwine asked. “I find that hard to believe. Surely you, as his assistant, are privy to all his bolt-holes. You must know somewhere he could be hiding.”

Before I could answer, he punched me on the chin, a hook that nearly broke my jaw, hurting as much the mandibles attached to my skull as the chin itself. This was going to be far worse than I had thought, even with a vivid and classically trained imagination.

The third punch brought a welt to my right cheek, and the fourth opened a cut over my left eyebrow. I lost count after that. The appearance of questioning me was moot; after the second punch I was no longer able to converse, anyway, so there wouldn’t have been a way for me to answer him even if I’d wanted to. Nightwine switched to my torso, jabbing his fist into my stomach and ribs time and again. Finally, he drove a punch from his knees straight into my solar plexus. My heart gave a lurch and I passed out.

I awoke later staring into a pool of blood at my feet. I was alone. There was no telling how long I had been unconscious. Both of my eyes were nearly swollen shut, and everything was on fire, my face a solid mask of agony. The gas jets were off and there was very little light coming in from the window behind me. It must be evening already.

I thought it unlikely Nightwine would check on me again until the next day. No one would come to feed me, and they must be certain I was unconscious for the night. The last thing they expected, then, was that I would try to escape.

Slowly, methodically, I began testing the knots, doing my best to work my way out of them. There must be no strong tugging, which would only tighten the ropes further. The roughness chafed and cut my flesh, and I was near to passing out from the pain, but I persisted. I could do this. It was my only chance. The blood when it came greased the rope further. After about forty-five minutes my left hand was free and five minutes later I was out of the chair and hobbling up the stair.

I opened the door at the top, and found the hall deserted. Slipping across to the back door, I let myself out. Sprinting as quickly as I could to the back gate, I had to stop for a full minute in plain sight for my vision to clear. Then I went through the gate and got lost in a network of back alleys. At some point, walking became impossible, and I began to crawl.

It was impossible to raise my head anymore and I was forced to count the paving stones in front of me. Somewhere around number thirty-nine a woman screamed. That was enough, I told myself, and collapsed. Rolling on my back, I contemplated the stars overhead for a moment and I recognized Cassiopeia. After that, I don’t remember anything at all.