The Bedlam Detective

SEVEN

There was now a motor vehicle on the street outside the hall, a landaulet tourer with a silent chauffeur seated in the open behind its wheel. The chauffeur was gloved and muffled against the elements. There was no one in the passenger cab behind him. Stephen Reed went past the vehicle and bore down on his man at the door.

“I said to let nobody in,” Stephen Reed said.

“I know,” the man said, “but it’s Sir Owain, sir. How was I supposed to stop him?”

“Nobody means nobody!”

Sebastian followed Stephen Reed inside.

The construction of the public assembly rooms was honest and un-fussy. The floors were of scrubbed bare planks, the walls of painted boards. A large public chamber with seats and a stage and open rafters stood dark and empty. They passed along a corridor beside it to a suite of rooms behind the stage.

A second volunteer watchman sat on a chair in the corridor. He rose as Stephen Reed was approaching and began to give a halting explanation of his conduct.

But before the man could say much of anything, the detective said, “I’ll be speaking to you later,” and swept on by. Following a few paces behind, Sebastian was able to see the special constable’s unhappy expression as he sank back to his seat.

One of the rooms was a scullery. It had tiled walls and a sloping floor with a drain at its center. Its windows were small and high with frosted glass and metal bars. It was into this room that the two girls had been brought to spend their first night as objects of mourning and evidence of murder.

They lay much as they’d lain in the woods, side by side, only now on folding tables, and covered by shrouds. Someone had placed a single flower on each.

Two men were in the room with them.

One man stood back and played no part. In the soft, unsteady glow of gaslight the older of the two had raised a corner of one of the shrouds and was looking on the face beneath. In the time since the bodies had been brought in, a small amount of blood had risen through the fine linen and now marked the positions of the features and the girls’ extremities.

“Sir,” Stephen Reed said, “this is a criminal investigation. I have to ask you to leave.”

Without dropping the material, the man looked up. He was somewhere past his sixtieth year. His eyes were almost without color, his hair sparse and white. Sebastian could see that, at least until recent years, he’d been a man of some vigor. He still had the frame of one, but now an older man’s flesh hung on it. The same slight air of misfit could be seen in his starched collar and heavy tweed suit. The suit was-had been-of the most expensive weight and cut. A suit fit for a gentleman of the shires.

“And you are …?” he said.

“Detective Sergeant Stephen Reed. I’m the officer in charge of this case.”

The man holding up the shroud gave a sweet smile. Which Sebastian found unsettling, given the circumstances.

“Albert Reed’s boy?”

“Sir,” the young man said, testily.

“No harm done, Sergeant Reed,” Sir Owain said. “We’re men of science. And these girls were found on my land.”

During this exchange Sebastian was eyeing the second man, standing over against the wall. This man was some ten years younger. An educated professional, by the look of him. He stood with arms folded, his expression betraying no emotion. But his gaze flicked from his companion to the detective, and back again. As if ready to step in with a word or more, should anything more than a word be needed.

Stephen Reed said, “I know who you are, sir. But for the moment this is not a public place and you should not have entered it.”

“Your policemen let me in.”

“They were at fault in doing so. Please replace the sheet as you found it.”

The corner of the shroud was lowered with the greatest delicacy.

“You don’t want to hear my theory, then,” Sir Owain said.

“I need to hear anything that will help me to find those responsible. But please.”

Stephen Reed gestured toward the door. The second man had unfolded his arms and now stepped forward from the wall to murmur something into his companion’s ear. Sebastian was unable to pick up what was said, but it had the air of a gentle suggestion.

At that, the older man nodded. He didn’t so much lead the way out as move ahead and allow himself to be steered. Sebastian followed, and Stephen Reed stayed behind for a moment to check the room and then lower the gas.

In Stephen Reed’s position, Sebastian would have been happy to hear any theory, too. This was no incident of child-stripping. That had been a common crime once, taking advantage of a child’s size and weakness to steal and sell its clothing. But even then it had rarely ended in death, except incidentally as a result of exposure.

The volunteer Special was on his feet again. Stephen Reed came out of the room and closed the door behind him. He closed it gently, as if not to disturb the sleep of those inside.

He straightened and said to the first of the two intruders, “Now, sir. What can you tell me?”

And the older man leaned forward and put his hand on the detective’s arm. He looked intently into Stephen Reed’s eyes and said, in a tone as if imparting a deep confidence, “Those children were torn by beasts.”

Stephen Reed’s expression did not change.

“Beasts,” he said.

“Of a form that the human mind can barely encompass. Your search parties won’t find them. They arise, do what they will, and then vanish away.”

He waited for a reaction. The second man stepped in close and touched his companion’s shoulder; the older man was aware of it, and the shift in his posture acknowledged it, but he did not take his eyes from Stephen Reed’s. He would stay there until he had a response.

The detective said, “Thank you, Sir Owain. I’ll make a note of that.”

The other man had a proper hold on Sir Owain, and Sir Owain, satisfied that he’d been heard, allowed himself to be drawn away. Not so much by a friend or a companion as by a keeper.

Speaking out for the first time, Sebastian called after him, saying, “Sir Owain Lancaster. Yes?”

Sir Owain turned back on hearing his name.

Sebastian went on, “My name is Sebastian Becker. You should be expecting a visit from me.”

The second man, whom Sebastian assumed to be Dr. Hubert Sibley, Lancaster’s personal physician, said, “Surely not tonight?”

“We’ll make it tomorrow morning,” Sebastian said. “I’m staying at the Sun Inn. Can you send your car to pick me up at ten?”

Sibley didn’t try to argue. “I’m sure that will be acceptable,” he said. “We’ll be ready for you then.”

As for Sir Owain, it was as if he’d said his piece. Now he was happy to do whatever he was told.

Dr. Sibley finally succeeded in drawing his patient away and ushered him out to their waiting car. Stephen Reed let out a breath and then closed his eyes, taking a moment to settle his mind. Outside, Sebastian could hear the Daimler being started on its crank.

Here in the corridor, there was a moment’s silence. The Special waited for the reprimand that he probably didn’t think he deserved.

Then, choosing his words with care, Stephen Reed said, “You know more of this than you’ve been saying, Mister Becker, and you’ve known it all along.”

“The camera?” Sebastian prompted.

Stephen Reed hesitated, wary of saying anything more that the Special might overhear and repeat.

“This way,” he said to Sebastian, and led the way to a storage room adjoining the scullery.

The room was small and had been cleared of its usual contents in order to fit in two more of the folding tables. All the pieces of evidence from the woodland scene had been laid out separately, like parts of a puzzle or a toy requiring assembly. Shoes, the contents of the wicker basket, the bloodstained cloth bags fished from the gorse.

Stephen Reed surveyed the arrangement.

“Any sign of interference?” Sebastian said.

“I don’t believe so.”

In the middle of one table stood the varnished wooden box that Sebastian had taken from the boy soldier, and which had been taken from him in turn.

“Is that the camera you meant?” Stephen Reed said. “I took it for some kind of an instrument case. It’s not like any camera that I’ve seen.”

“Nor me,” Sebastian said. “But there’s a maker’s plate and a patent number, and that surely is some kind of a lens on the side. We shouldn’t try to do anything with it. This calls for professional advice. Did I see a photographer’s studio on the main street?”

“The local photographer went out with the search,” Stephen Reed said, turning the box around and squinting to read the maker’s plate in the poor light. “I’ll have him look at this first thing in the morning.”

Carefully, he set the box back in its place. Sebastian was looking at the two bloodstained bags. The blood had dried and the print was difficult to read, but they appeared to be flour bags.

“Those were lying close to the bodies,” Stephen Reed said.

“Not covering the faces?”

“I think they probably were. They may have been pulled from the heads of the children as they were dragged out into the open. But I can’t get the soldiers to say.”

“Why did the soldiers move them at all?”

“Because they thought it was required of them. Like corpses from the field of battle. They’d have put the bodies on a cart and brought them back into town if they’d had one.”

“This is not a consequence of child-stripping,” Sebastian said. “You surely can’t think so.”

“I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot, you and I. But I suggest that now it’s time to share your knowledge.”

“That is awkward,” Sebastian said, “given that it involves both Sir Owain and your own superiors to some degree.”

“In what way, exactly?”

“Come to the inn when your business here is done,” Sebastian said, “and I can show you what I mean.”