by Alex Grecian
The high judge turned his head so the men wouldn’t recognize him if they saw him later and waited until they went back to their own conversation before he spoke. “If I knew who he was, I wouldn’t need you.”
“And why do you need us?”
“To kill him, of course. To kill Jack.”
Mr Parker looked again at Mrs Parker. As one they pushed back from the table and stood. Mrs Parker reached down for another slice of bread.
“You can’t leave,” the judge said.
“You’ve wasted our time,” Mr Parker said. “You will get a statement of charges from us shortly. Our traveling expenses. I suggest you pay it with all quickness.”
“Wait,” the judge said. He stuck out his hand, as if warding off an approaching carriage. “One minute. Hear me out.”
“Why?”
“I’m paying you for your time, aren’t I? We are, I mean, the Karstphanomen are. I speak for them. Look here, you might just as well finish your tea.” He could hear a note of desperation entering his voice and he fought to control it. He hoped the next time he opened his mouth that wheedling tone would be gone. “You’ve come all this way; why wouldn’t you at least finish your tea?”
After a moment Mrs Parker sat, and Mr Parker followed suit. Neither of them looked at the judge, but he took their continued presence as an invitation to speak. “We caught him,” he said. “Two years ago. We’re the ones. The police couldn’t do it, the press couldn’t do it. We did it. The Karstphanomen.” He smiled at them, proud, but they ignored him.
“Another spot of tea, love?”
Mr Parker nodded, and Mrs Parker poured for him. He sipped without acknowledging her or the judge.
“Well, you see,” the judge continued, “we did it. But we couldn’t very well just . . . We couldn’t just end him. He’d done so much, done so much to them poor women.” He stopped and caught himself. His grammar was slipping. It wasn’t like him at all. He hadn’t even touched a drop.
“So you let him go again? For the sport?” Mrs Parker licked a spot of cream off her upper lip.
“No,” the judge said. He felt very warm. “No, we kept him. And we showed him what he’d done. We did the same things to him, over and over, that he’d done to the women, in hopes that we could make amends for some of it, maybe for all the things men have ever done to women.”
“Not possible,” Mrs Parker said. “Not even a thing to think about.”
“But we meant well.”
“The road to hell is paved in that sort of rubbish,” Mr Parker said. “Isn’t that what they say? Rubbish thinking?”
“Very well to say now,” the judge said. “But he got himself free, Jack did. And Walter Day helped.”
“Walter Day is the fellow you say is alive now.”
“Right. We thought he was dead. We thought Jack had got Walter.”
“You say this Day fellow avoided you?”
“He did.”
“Then what is there to fear from him?”
“What if Jack told him something?”
“What if he did?”
“Walter Day will be found. There are many people looking for him. My own daughter is . . . But if Jack told him who we are, and if Walter tells the police who we are . . . well, things are likely to get a bit hot in London.”
“So I repeat myself: You want us to remove Walter Day.”
The judge sat back in his chair. The back was high and padded, and he heard a gasp of air as his weight hit it. “No,” he said. “No, at all costs you must not harm Walter Day. But you must eliminate any and all things that Walter Day might disclose. If there is no Jack, there is nothing for the police to investigate, do you understand? If Jack is dead, the trail ends with him, and I can deal privately with anything that Walter knows.”
“You know this Day person well?”
“Well enough.”
“Perhaps Jack has fled. Perhaps he’s no longer in London.”
“He’s here. He’s killing us. He’s killing the members of the . . . He’s killing the ones who tortured him. He’s out for revenge, and there are damn few of us left now.”
“Ah.” Mr Parker leaned back, a bite of cake held halfway to his mouth. “Now I begin to see.” He turned to Mrs Parker, and she pursed her lips. She nodded, and he turned his gaze back to the high judge. “You are afraid of this Jack because he is going to kill you and you wish him to be dead before he does so. Why did you not say as much at the very beginning?”
“It’s a complicated situation.”
“In our experience, most situations can be made to be less complicated. It is our specialty.”
“You don’t understand,” the judge said.
“Then tell us.”
He did. He left out everything that he thought the Parkers might use against him, but he told them about finding Jack asleep, sprawled across the body of poor Mary Jane Kelly, about taking Jack and clapping him in irons and leaving Mary there on the bed, her guts spilled out across the mattress. He told them about the year they’d spent, he and the others, cutting Jack, cutting him in every place that he had cut his victims, but keeping him alive so they could cut him again. And again. And he told them about Inspector Walter Day, who had stumbled across their dirty secret, the secret they kept deep underground in abandoned tunnels, how Saucy Jack had somehow changed places with Walter Day, tortured the detective, damaged him physically and mentally, then spirited him away.
When he had finished, Mr and Mrs Parker waited, as if there might be more to tell. They polished off the cakes and the tea, and Mr Parker excused himself. He stood and walked away. When he had gone, Mrs Parker fixed the judge with a contemptuous stare and smacked her lips. “So,” she said, “that was a long story, but it only means this: You thought Walter Day was dead, but now he is not, and his being alive is a problem for you.”
“We thought we could stop Jack. Find him and kill him,” the judge said. (Why was she speaking to him in this manner when her husband wasn’t even there? The man ought not involve his wife in business matters. But there was no use trying to make sense of foreign customs. People from other countries were often like animals.) “He keeps killing us, Jack does. There are bloody few of us left.”
“So you say, but we still don’t understand why you want this Jack dead and not Walter. Finding and killing Walter Day is the simpler task.”
“It’s too much to go into.”
“There must be something personal, some other reason you—”
“Don’t you dare.” The judge slammed his fist against the table. “I’ve been patient with you, I’ve allowed you to speak to me as if . . . as if we were somehow equals, but don’t you dare question me or my motives.” He shook his finger at her. “You just watch your tone with me. Do you know who I am?”
To his surprise, Mrs Parker smiled again. And the longer she smiled, the bigger her smile became. The judge looked around for Mr Parker and was glad to see the man returning to the table. He stood and grabbed Mr Parker’s chair for him. His hands were trembling.
Mr Parker looked at them both and settled a hand on Mrs Parker’s arm. He shook his head and waited a moment before addressing her. “What has happened? Our host looks likely to piss himself.”
“I’ve been good,” Mrs Parker said. “I haven’t hurt him. We have been discussing the work we are to do.”
“Ah,” Mr Parker said. “Very well then.”
“And the . . . I’m sorry, what do you call yourself? Within your silly gentlemen’s club?”
“It’s not a . . .” The judge paused and wiped his face with a napkin. “It’s not a club. It’s a society. And I am the high judge because I am responsible for the final decisions as regards the ultimate fates of our subjects.” He raised his cup and sipped, trying to regain his composure.
“The judge, then,” Mrs Parker said. “The ju
dge of the Karstphanomen. Isn’t that what you call yourselves? He has decided to pay us double our usual amount.”
“But that’s not . . .” The judge aspirated a mouthful of his tea and went through a brief coughing fit. The Parkers watched calmly. No one around them seemed to notice or care. The elderly men had already left, and the waitstaff was nowhere to be seen. When he could breathe again, the judge continued. “I never,” he said. It was the best he could do. His throat burned now.
“You have brought the fee we asked for?”
“It’s here.” The judge pushed an envelope across the table, and Mr Parker made it disappear. “It’s all right there. The entire amount you said.”
“Good,” Mr Parker said.
“But this is sufficient for only one half of the job you require,” Mrs Parker said. “This is the amount you will pay us to find Jack the Ripper. And when we do, you must pay us the same amount again to kill him.”
“What?”
“We don’t care to solve international mysteries. It is not what we do. We do a single job, a job most people, for whatever reason, do not care to do for themselves. You ask us to find this person who is unfindable and then also to put an end to his doings, is that not right?”
“I thought you would—”
“There is no point in thinking about what we do,” Mrs Parker said. “You have asked us to do two things, so you should pay us two times. Is that not fair? You will pay us and we will do it and then you will sleep like the babies all night long, is it not so?”
“Mr Parker, surely you won’t allow your wife to speak to me—”
“If you haven’t noticed, Mr Carlyle, I don’t allow or disallow my wife anything. She tends to speak her own mind. Is that the phrase? And you are a lucky man if all she does is speak.”
They knew his name. His real name. Perhaps they knew more. Where he lived? The membership of the Karstphanomen? He took a deep, shuddering breath and thought of Claire and the babies. Then he nodded.
“Good,” Mr Parker said. “Then it’s settled. Thank you very much for the tea and cakes. We’ll get on with our business now.”
Leland Carlyle, the high judge of the Karstphanomen, sat quietly as the killers left the coffeehouse. Carlyle averted his eyes as Mrs Parker walked away. Her trousers left little to the imagination. On their way out, Mr Parker gave the woman in the apron a coin. He smiled and nodded at her just as if he were a human being.
12
There was a small stack of books on the mantel, and Ambrose pointed to them. “That what you use for cigarette paper? Roll tobacco up in the pages and people get clever when they smoke the words?”
Day chuckled. “No, I don’t think I could do that.” He picked up the top book, blew a film of dust off the cover. “I like books. Do you know how to read, Ambrose?”
Ambrose shook his head. “I mean, I know a bit from the ragged school, but only barely enough. Books’r hard, and we didn’t need to know readin’ to make a living.”
“You should try again. You’re a clever lad, and reading’s easy once you’ve got the hang of it. You could go far with a little education. Do more with your life.”
“Like you? Sellin’ old leavings on the street?”
Day turned the book over and opened it to a random page.
“I’m sorry,” Ambrose said. “Didn’t mean nothin’ by what I said. What’s that book about?”
“I’ve read it before,” Day said. “It’s by Lear.”
“What’s that mean?”
“The author. Edward Lear. It’s a book of his poems. My . . . I knew a woman once who liked them. She wrote poetry, too.”
“Can’t figure the meaning in poems. Thanks, but no thanks.”
“Suit yourself,” Day said. “But these poems are funny. Do you know the alphabet?”
“Some. I know the shapes.”
“Here’s a nonsense alphabet. You might like that.”
“I appreciate the thought, guv, but I’m only smart about some things.”
Day sat on the sofa beside Ambrose. “Here,” he said, “do you know this letter?”
“Oh, I seen this before.” Ambrose pointed at a small illustration of a cat. “That letter means cat, and it means cigar, too. But it should mean moon, ’cause that’s what it looks like, right?”
“‘C was a cat who ran after a rat; but his courage did fail when she seized on his tail. Crafty old cat!’”
“That is a bit funny. That’s a way to go about teaching a thing. Make it so it’s not boring. Lemme see.” Ambrose took the book from Day and leafed through it. “That don’t look right, that picture.”
“Why not?”
“I mean, that letter looks all wrong to spell the word shrubbery. Ain’t what I remember.”
“Because that letter is a Y, and the illustration there is of a yew. A yew tree. ‘Y was a yew, which flourished and grew by a quiet abode near the side of a road. Dark little yew!”
“Dark little you?”
“Exactly right.”
13
We can’t turn him away,” Hatty said. “We can’t afford to.”
“What does . . .” But Hammersmith suddenly decided it wasn’t worth arguing with her. He closed his mouth and waved his hand at her, hoping she’d leave his office and go bother Eugenia instead.
She didn’t. “We have one client and we haven’t made progress in a year on that case, and he was your friend and I’m sorry, I’m truly sorry to put it so bluntly, but we need more clients and we need more work and I’m sure we need more money coming in.” She paused for breath, but before Hammersmith could say anything, she started again. “I need more work. I’m as good as any man at all this; I just need the chance to actually do something.”
Hammersmith waited to be sure she was finished. After a moment of strained silence, he nodded. “He was my friend. He is my friend. This agency, such as it is, exists for only one reason, and that’s to find Walter Day and return him to his family.”
“For all we know he’s dead.” Hatty’s eyes widened, and she swallowed hard. “Oh, no, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. Sometimes I just talk and things come out that I didn’t ever intend.”
“No, you’re right. He may be dead.” Hammersmith looked away at the stacks of papers that dominated his office. “He may be.” He looked back up at her. “But we have no evidence that he is dead, and so we must assume that he’s alive and needs our help. And if he’s dead, if he’s really gone, then we need to find that out and settle the issue for Claire. She has four children, and the uncertainty is hard on her.” It’s hard on all of us, he thought.
“May I begin again in some way that isn’t so rude?”
“No, I understand your frustration and I appreciate your honesty. Just as I appreciate your help here. But I can’t handle more clients. I have to think about Walter right now. Anything else would be . . .” He broke off again and waggled his fingers in the air, this time dismissing all the hypothetical cases he couldn’t deal with. “Go back to his home and look again for more clues.”
“I’ve been there a hundred times. Or at least a dozen. And I’ve been to the pub he used to frequent, and I’ve been to Scotland Yard so much that they don’t even talk to me anymore there. There’s nothing I can do, and you don’t have time to work on the Hargreave case. So let me keep at it, let me do the investigation.”
“This is more involved than the usual sort of thing you do,” Hammersmith said.
“Yes, it is,” she said. “But it’s nothing I can’t handle, I promise.”
“And if I need you here?”
“If you need me, I’ll drop everything, I’ll let the other case go and be right here to do anything you ask.”
He could already see that he’d lost. She was now framing the debate in such a way that it was a foregone conclusion. And he couldn’t muster the ene
rgy to steer things back the way he wanted them to go. She was probably right. If they hadn’t found Walter in a year of looking . . . Well, Walter was probably dead. Or it was even possible he didn’t want to be found. Before he’d gone missing, Day had seemed overwhelmed by the prospect of fatherhood, and his career prospects hadn’t been good. Some men in that situation might leave their families and start again somewhere else.
Hammersmith shook his head, dispelling the unworthy thought, but Hatty misunderstood the gesture.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll go back to 184 Regent’s Park Road and I’ll look for clues that aren’t there and were never there. And then I’ll do it all over again tomorrow.”
“No,” Hammersmith said, “it’s not you. I was reacting to a thought I didn’t like.”
“Thinking what?”
“Something else. Something shameful and unfair. Walter Day was a good man, and he’ll be found. But there’s no point in combing over his house again. There’s nothing there.”
“Does that mean . . . ?”
“Tell me about your case. What is it?”
“A missing man.”
“We seem to be specializing.”
“It’s all very mysterious. He works for the new store—you know, the one that opened up where Plumm’s used to be, only it’s still Plumm’s, I suppose, only much larger and with more things to buy.”
Hammersmith shook his head. He had no use for stores.
“Well, in any event, it’s there,” Hatty said. “And this man, Joseph Hargreave, works for the place. Only he didn’t come to work one day and he hasn’t been seen since.”
“Happens all the time.”
“I suppose it must, but this time someone came to us about it. His brother is mad with worry and wants you to investigate, only he doesn’t know that it’s me doing the investigating, not you.”
“We should tell him.”
“Oh, no, you mustn’t. If he knows, he’ll hire someone else and won’t pay us.”
“Hatty, you’ve never really investigated anything before.”
