The Hellfire Conspiracy bal-4

by Will Thomas

  “Then it is in the Yard’s interest not to let this get out,” Barker said.

  Swanson smoothed his mustache. “It may be too late for that. Stead is sniffing about, and you know how he is. This is just the sort of thing for him to smear across the front page of his rag and set off a panic London would never forget.”

  “So what brought you to the C.O.S.?” Barker asked.

  “I was letting them know the sad news. Oh, haven’t you gentlemen heard? Mrs. DeVere killed herself last night. Woke up from her laudanum dreams just long enough to swallow the rest of a new bottle.”

  “Oh, no!” I cried.

  “Aye, and your client has gone mad with grief. His servants say after he found her, he threw on his coat and ran out the door. He hasn’t been heard from since. I sent word ’round to your house this morning. Apparently, you were out.”

  13

  I wondered if swanson was trying to bait Barker or merely to shock him. My employer put his head down and shook it. As for me, I felt some guilt over Hypatia DeVere, as if I myself had treated her badly. Had she appeared calm and graceful as Miss Hill the first time I met her, I would have accused her in my mind of being cold, and yet I had thought uncharitably of her for being puffy eyed. She was doing what she should have been doing, which was agonizing over the welfare of her daughter.

  So there it was, I thought. Gwendolyn DeVere was dead. Hypatia DeVere was dead. Our client had run off in grief. At least six other girls had also been killed and all because of a monster who called himself a name out of a fairy tale.

  My employer turned to me after Swanson left. “Come, lad, let us see about the postmortem.”

  “Do you think it will be finished?” I asked as I followed Barker down Globe Road.

  “Dr. Vandeleur runs a tight ship,” he said. “If it is not finished, it shall be soon.”

  There was a big difference in my mind between finished and almost finished. Finished meant I could look at it all on paper, with drawings. Almost finished was “Look here, while I lift up the liver, at the discoloration of the stomach.” I’d had the misfortune to have been there several times and viewed close to a dozen bodies at least, but they all had been adult males.

  I knew the girl was dead and all sentient thought had left her body. I would even agree with Barker that at one point her soul had departed, as well. But I could not help but think that Gwendolyn DeVere would have objected to lying naked on a slab while men sliced her up like a Billingsgate haddock. I had no desire to see the body.

  Vandeleur, it turned out, was at a conference in Glasgow and we were passed on to Dr. Trent, his resident, who had done the postmortem himself. He was a stocky young chap with a round head and a Vandyke who looked as if he didn’t allow the nature of his work to interfere with his digestion.

  “Have you finished your report on the DeVere child, doctor?” Barker asked.

  “Finished an hour ago. How are you connected with it?”

  “I am Cyrus Barker, a private enquiry agent. I work for Major DeVere. I saw the corpse where it was found.”

  “Were you aware it was connected to several other cases?” Trent asked.

  “Aye, I was. Did you find anything out of the ordinary in the postmortem?”

  “It was the most remarkable I’ve ever seen.”

  He reached for the clipboard and began looking through the papers while I gave a sigh of relief. Perhaps papers were all I would be forced to look at.

  “You noted the traces of rouge and the kohl about her eyes?”

  “Yes. She was painted like a Parisian tart.”

  “When I wiped them off her face, I found burns under her nose and around her lips.”

  “Chloroform,” Barker stated. “It burns the skin.”

  “Indeed. There was no facial burning in the other cases according to our records, but I still believe chloroform was used, though not directly on the skin. It might have been in a folded handkerchief. I assume the killer had either changed his method of capturing his victims or perhaps the girl struggled and came in contact with the chloroform itself. But then, as I continued the postmortem, another theory occurred to me. Perhaps Miss DeVere was sensitive. I believe she had a reaction to the chemical used.”

  “Why do you think that?” Barker asked.

  “Because she had a reaction to something else. It’s all here.” He began rustling through the papers. “No, I think it would be best if you saw it on the corpse itself.”

  Oh, no, I thought, as we were taken to another room and directed to a still form on a table. The resident lifted back the sheet, exposing the girl’s face. It truly was a girl’s face now, not a child painted to look like an adult. Her skin was clear and pale, and there was a purpling of the upper lip, a smudge like a thumbprint. Then, like a stage magician doing a trick, Dr. Trent whisked away the sheet.

  There was a purpling across her entire torso. It formed lines across her body from the right hip to the throat, down to the left hip, from there across to the right shoulder, back to the left shoulder, and down to the right hip again, lines forming the shape of a star. The first thing I thought when I saw the marks was that she had been used in some sort of witchcraft or unholy ritual.

  “Do you know what might have left these lines?” Barker prodded.

  “It had washed off in the tide, but I found traces of it. It was common whitewash. I believe she had a reaction to the lime. Her skin was so sensitive it left the marks behind, you see.”

  “What are these random marks on the stomach?” I asked.

  “Those are very interesting. They are burns also, but not like the others. They left a residue. Wax. Candle wax, to be precise. And this thin mark just under the breastbone is a bruise. She was struck by something small there, no more than a few centimeters long. It can’t have hurt her much. Death was due to manual strangulation, like the other girls.”

  “May I?” Barker asked. He reached forward and placed his thumbs on the bruises where her killer’s thumbs had been, then slid his fingers around. Whoever the killer was, he had hands smaller than my employer.

  “He took a souvenir, like the others,” I noted.

  “Yes, the index finger on the right hand at the first knuckle. It was a clean cut, shears of some sort, I would say. The wound was not ragged.”

  The slight pressure of Barker’s fingers on the corpse’s neck was enough to force a small sigh from the corpse’s cold lips. The three of us sprang back, but it proved to be a normal reaction. All the same, Dr. Trent settled the sheet around her, unconsciously tucking it in as if she had been merely asleep. Barker continued to regard her while I copied notes from the file into my notebook.

  “Has Inspector Swanson read your report?” Barker asked.

  “No, sir, not yet.”

  “That’s a mercy, at least.”

  “Might we borrow that report?” I asked.

  Trent shook his head, and Barker looked at me. “Why do you ask?”

  “I thought it might give us something to bargain with.”

  Signing out at the morgue desk, we walked several streets to the Basin Docks and counted seagulls. I bought a penny loaf from a street vendor, and we spent the next half hour breaking it into bits and tossing it into the water while the gulls cartwheeled and dived after them.

  “Ho’s?” he asked, clapping the crumbs from his fingers.

  We weren’t more than a few streets from the tearoom where Barker’s Chinese friend conducted business and collected information.

  “I could not eat, sir.”

  “No food. Just tea.”

  Barker and I walked along the waterfront until we found ourselves in the narrow lane leading to the anonymous door, and then we went down the stairs and under the Thames before finally fetching up in Ho’s establishment. As usual, it was filled with a secretive crowd. The smoke from several cigars and the smell of food made me nauseous, but after a cup of tea, I felt a little better.

  Ho came out of the kitchen and regarded us from unde
r hooded eyes. Perhaps “regard” is too positive a word. He is large and squat, with brawny naked arms covered in tattoos, and an apron tied around his thick waist. He has a shaved forehead and earlobes full of rings that hang to his shoulder. I felt like a cockroach he was deciding how to squash. Then he spoke directly to me, which is almost unprecedented.

  “You boxer now.”

  Ho could speak English flawlessly, but the more malevolent he feels the more pidgin English he uses.

  “Yes,” I said. “I had a challenge given me. But how did you know?”

  Ho shrugged, which was the closest I’d get to an explanation. He turned to Barker. “Girl is dead. That makes several, right?”

  Barker nodded.

  “These girls’ blood cries out from the grave. You must find this man.”

  “I am trying.”

  “Try harder.”

  I cannot believe the things Ho says to Barker and gets away with. If I’d said that to him, I’d have found myself on the ground with the heel of his boot between my collar stays. With Ho, the remark merely merited a slight rise of the eyebrows.

  “Help me, then.”

  “What do you need?”

  “I believe a group of some sort is practicing satanic rituals in London-young English maidens sacrificed on an altar as a spectacle for others.”

  “Ritual,” Ho repeated. “You mean devil worship. Christian, one God, one devil, neh? I must consult archives. Come.”

  He led us through the kitchen into his office, which is dominated by a desk with the legs sawn off. As we sat on the cushions in front of the desk, he moved behind to a wall with a giant silk tapestry covered in dragons and demure Chinese maidens. He pressed a spot and a small door opened in the center of the tapestry. Then the Chinaman pulled out a ledger and settled himself behind the desk. He opened the book and began scanning pages, moving from top to bottom, for it was written in Chinese.

  “Give me more information first,” he said.

  “The girl was found yesterday, so presumably she was killed on Friday. Friday seems a fitting day for a Satanic ritual. I don’t believe these are serious occultists, however. More likely they are rakes amusing themselves with halfclad maids while a great deal of alcohol is consumed.”

  Ho nodded and began to study the ledger as I shifted on my pillow. I could never get comfortable cross-legged. European limbs are not built for such positions. In the kitchen behind us, the cooks and waiters bawled out orders to one another in Mandarin or Cantonese.

  “Two young English come in here two Fridays ago,” Ho said, looking down at his ledger. “Both had been drinking. One said, ‘His lordship throws quite a party.’ Other says, ‘Too much flash-bang and rituals for my taste, but the girls were choice.’ Then they place order and talk of other things.”

  “‘His lordship,’” Barker murmured, “that doesn’t narrow it down much.”

  “Sorry,” Ho said, with a look that said he was not sorry at all. “I will start asking men to please speak in full sentences and identify those of whom they speak.”

  “Do your waiters listen in on every conversation?” I asked.

  “Only ones that seem important,” the Chinaman replied, giving me what I call his dyspeptic-Buddha expression.

  “What do you do with the information?” I said, ignoring Barker’s warning look.

  “Whatever I think best. Most of the time, nothing. Sometimes tell, sometimes sell.”

  “To whom do you sell it?”

  “Alla time question man. Who? What? When? Where? Shi Shi Ji, send this boy to a temple. Teach him to listen twice, talk once. Maybe never!”

  I’d run through Ho’s store of patience, which can fit inside one of his thimble-sized teacups, but I’d reached the point where his appearance-half pirate, half temple demon-no longer frightened me.

  “Thank you,” Barker said to his friend.

  As we were about to leave, the Chinaman said, “The Frenchman quit, I hear.”

  Barker nodded.

  Ho, who had a long-standing feud with Dummolard, gave a satisfied smile.

  14

  “Lad, cut along and visit miss Potter at the Katherine Building. Bring her to our chambers. If I am satisfied, I shall engage her services, provided she is still serious about her offer.”

  “If she’s anything, she’s serious,” I said. “I’m certain she hasn’t changed her mind. I’ll see if she can come.”

  I took a smart-looking hansom, hoping to impress Miss Potter, and left Barker to take an omnibus.

  The Katherine Building where she worked was in a villainous part of Whitechapel, hard by the docks and the fish market. I let the cab driver curse until the air was blue about soiling his pretty wheels among the fish offal-strewn puddles, but we reached a liberal financial agreement. I went inside and found Miss Potter and explained that Barker wanted to see her. She put up the expected argument; she was busy collecting the rents. In turn, I told her this was her only chance. She conferred with a colleague and soon we were traveling through the City on our way to Whitehall. She was nervous about being interviewed by my employer, and I explained that while going into his office was like approaching a lion in its den, he improved upon closer acquaintance. I wasn’t certain she believed me. I’m not sure I did either.

  Once back in Craig’s Court, I sat her in the visitor’s chair and left her to look about the room. She was only the second woman I’d seen in that seat since the year began. Barker was nowhere to be found.

  “Jenkins?”

  Our clerk was staring at our visitor as if she were an apparition from heaven.

  “He hasn’t come through here, Mr. L.,” he said. “Try outside.”

  I found Barker in the bare courtyard behind our offices, fingering a small, anonymous wildflower that had grown up through the cracks in the pavement.

  “I’m thinking of putting in a small garden here,” he said, not looking up.

  “Really?” I said. “That would be jolly.”

  “That way, we can do our physical culture exercises out here during our spare moments.”

  There’s nothing I would like better, I thought, than to come out to the courtyard in all manner of weather and do Barker’s exercises on the paving stones.

  “She’s here, sir, waiting in your office.”

  Barker nodded. Before he went inside, he shot his cuffs and resettled his frock coat, like an actor about to go on-stage. He’d eschew such a comparison, but it was apt all the same.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Potter,” he said, striding into his chamber. He took her delicate hand in his calloused one, the same hand I’d seen put bone locks on several men in the year or more since I’d begun working with him. Beatrice Potter murmured a greeting. She did her best to look undaunted, but Barker had daunted braver people than she.

  “Mr. Llewelyn tells me that you are anxious to aid our efforts to find Gwendolyn DeVere’s killer. Most women your age,” Barker noted, “are concerned with copying the latest fashions from Paris or compiling a list of the eligible young men of their set.”

  “I am not most women my age, sir.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Do you think you could convince Miss Hill to have you take over Mrs. DeVere’s duties?”

  “I don’t foresee a problem. She was sad to see me go to my present position.”

  “Excellent. I realize you have other duties, but if you could contrive to attend at least an hour a day, I would be grateful.”

  “Do you suspect someone within the Charity Organization Society of having something to do with Gwendolyn DeVere’s murder?” she asked.

  “Miss, I suspect everyone in Bethnal Green and several others who haven’t set a foot inside it. It is not time to begin eliminating suspects just yet. I am hunting facts and opinions and I think you might be well placed to deliver both.”

  “I expect this to be a paid position.”

  “Certainly. I am not one of your charities.”

  “What duration shall be my employment?�
�

  “It shall be brief, merely a week or two, until I find the man who murdered Miss DeVere.”

  “You think you shall find him in so short a time?” she dared ask.

  “I can but cast my net, Miss Potter, but it is a stout old net, and I am an experienced fisherman. We are no longer looking for a white slave ring. Mr. Llewelyn and I have received a letter from a madman whom we believe has stolen and murdered half a dozen young girls in Bethnal Green.”

  “My word,” Miss Potter murmured, clutching her throat.

  “We learned that Miss DeVere’s escape from the charity was aided by Miss Ona Bellovich.”

  “Might I see the letter?”

  Cyrus Barker leaned back in his chair and scratched his chin absently, the way he does when deep in thought. He was not inconvenienced in the least that this girl was waiting for him to make a decision.

  “Very well,” he finally said, pulling the note from the wide middle drawer of his desk. “I would appreciate your opinion.”

  Beatrice took the letter and read it over a few times without comment. Finally, she set it back upon the desk, facedown.

  “Do you believe in woman’s intuition?”

  “I have no formed opinion. Perhaps.”

  She tapped the note with a nail. “This is pure evil.”

  Barker nodded but said nothing.

  “He’s very…harsh. His taunts must be unbearable to you.”

  I realized then how sensitive the girl was. She was actually concerned over my employer’s feelings.

  “I can bear them well enough, miss. Do you recognize the hand?”

  “I do not.”

  “What about the poetry? Is anyone at the charity a writer of poems?”

  “Miss Levy is a published poet. Amy’s work has appeared in several journals. Of course, it’s nothing like this. This is quite crude.”

  “I shall accept your opinion of it.”

  “Do you really smoke an ivory pipe?” she asked suddenly.