The Lazarus Gate

by Mark Latham

  ‘None of that, my good man. I’m looking for a map of London. A good Ordnance Survey if you have one.’

  With only a minor grumble that the sale would be a small one, the bookseller rifled through his cart, with grubby, dextrous fingers that protruded from fingerless woollen gloves. Before long he produced a whole pile of maps, bound together with string, and handed me the one I sought at a cost of threepence.

  ‘We have one of those at the club, if you recall,’ said Ambrose.

  ‘Yes. But I intend to deface this one,’ I said cheerfully. ‘Now come along, we have detective work to attend to.’

  ‘What on earth has come over you?’ Ambrose quizzed me as I limped off briskly to cross the road. ‘Last night you were all good manners and deference. Now you’re like a dog with a bone.’

  ‘Last night,’ I said, not slowing my pace as I crossed the street, ‘I was at first a fish out of water, then confounded by mysteries, and finally a victim. Today, I am a captain again, and an agent of the Crown, and I intend to carry out my assignment dutifully.’

  My companion did not reply, though I am certain he would have been shaking his head in amusement had I turned to look at him. I spoke the truth, but of course there were other, more personal reasons for my change of approach. I could not stop now; to do so would be to invite dark moods and temptation, and probably to wake each evening in some East End opium den rather than my comfortable Bloomsbury bed. Instead, I knew I had to embrace the new-found sense of purpose and heavy motivation that spurred me onwards. Together, Ambrose and I made down Oxford Street to hail another cab, this time headed for Pall Mall and the Apollonian Club.

  * * *

  The club was busier that afternoon than it had been the previous evening. A few clubmen were finishing afternoon tea in the dining room, whilst a large party of visitors were receiving a tour by one of the members. My appearance courted a few sideways glances, but I shrugged them off and allowed Ambrose to lead the way once more to the private office. We were intercepted en route by a formally dressed servant, whom Ambrose addressed as Hollins, and who handed me a letter bearing the seal of Apollo. ‘From Sir Toby, sir,’ was all Hollins said by way of explanation, before he went about his business. I saved the letter until we were safely inside the office and had turned up the lamps.

  Cpt. Hardwick,

  It seems that in one evening you have made more progress in our investigation than half a dozen men have made in several weeks. I have passed on your findings to my best clerks. I trust you will find the fruits of their labour with the case files by the time you return to the club.

  Keep up the good work.

  Yours, &c.,

  Sir Toby Fitzwilliam, Bart.

  I was somewhat surprised by the praise contained in that short note. Ambrose raised an eyebrow when he read it.

  ‘I always said that Sir Toby was incapable of human kindness,’ he quipped. ‘If he keeps this up I may have to find new ways to be disrespectful.’

  Ignoring him, I spread out the case files on the desk, under the light of the lamps. As intimated in Sir Toby’s note, there was a new notebook amongst them, a reporter’s pocketbook, which as far as I could tell contained a near-complete deciphering of the coded notebook in a neat hand, along with a few scribbled pencil-notes in the margins. I had no idea who the clerks were, where they were situated, or what hours they kept, but I was startled at the speed and thoroughness with which they had carried out the task. The majority of the entries in the pocketbook represented names and addresses, page after page of them. The margin notes indicated that a goodly proportion of those named were spiritualists, illusionists and so-called fortune-tellers, most of whom were already known to the club. More than a dozen of them were denoted as ‘deceased’; three as ‘known criminals’ and a further three of ‘unknown whereabouts’. The names meant nothing to me, although the vast majority of the addresses were in London.

  Ambrose scratched at his chin in puzzlement as we went over the clerks’ work. And then we flipped past the addresses to a dog-eared page near the back of the book. A brief explanatory note from a clerk explained that every fourth address in the book had contained an erroneous Burmese character, which when collated formed another set of coordinates, like the ones that marked the dynamite targets previously. This was an astonishing find, and both Ambrose and I examined the coordinates excitedly. The margin notes explained that each of the erroneous symbols had been added ‘almost certainly’ in several different hands, and that there were nine sets of coordinates present. The first three correlated to the scenes of three anarchist attacks the previous year; the fourth was Chelsea Hospital, and of unknown significance. The next four were identical to the ones noted on the scrap of paper, though again not written by the same person. The final coordinate was again of unknown significance, and seemed to point to an area of Commercial Road in Whitechapel. But even from memory, a pattern started to form in my mind.

  ‘I think I have something,’ I said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Allow me to demonstrate.’ I unfurled my map and made a small cross at each of the coordinates listed in the book. I then drew Ambrose’s attention to those sites around the Marble Arch incident. Kensington Road. Lisson Grove. Old Bond Street, and Marble Arch itself. ‘I’ve tried to place my little crosses as close to the actual addresses as I can, given the scale of the map. Now look.’ I took the notebook that had been left by the clerks and used the edge of its binding as a makeshift rule, drawing a straight pencil-line between the three detonation sites.

  ‘A triangle?’ queried Ambrose, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘Indeed. And if we were to pinpoint the locations, and apply the proper mathematics, I expect that Marble Arch would be in the dead centre of that triangle. Now look at the other coordinates. Battersea Bridge Road and Battersea Park Road on the South Bank, and Sloane Street on the north—what lies in the centre of that triangle?

  ‘Well, it’s hard to be exact,’ replied Ambrose, ‘but it looks like Chelsea Hospital. That bears out the coordinates that we found, but there was no explosion at the hospital.’

  ‘Just as there was no explosion at Marble Arch,’ I explained patiently. ‘I believe the points of the triangle are prearranged targets for our group of anarchists, and the central coordinate represents their means of escape; perhaps a rendezvous point with others of their group.’

  ‘Your theory seems relatively sound, but why triangles? Why so precise? And how is an exposed archway in the middle of London a suitable means of escape?’

  ‘So many questions, and I confess I cannot answer them,’ I admitted. ‘Triangles? Who knows. Perhaps it is some cod-symbolic gesture used by the group. Freemasons use geometric shapes in their ritual symbology, do they not?’

  Ambrose scoffed. ‘Come now, the great and the good of the grand lodges are unlikely to engage in dynamite crime.’

  ‘I never suggested they were,’ I said. ‘What I meant was that our group may have some occult or symbolic connection, which provides a motivation—or at least a direction—for their crimes. Look at the lists of names and addresses. So many of those people have a spiritualist or occult connection it cannot be coincidence. What we need to learn is whether those people are targets or collaborators, or both.’ I saw Ambrose waver, and knew I had started to convince him. I felt perhaps a flicker of triumph.

  ‘Oh, my sainted aunt! From latter-day Fenians to black magicians in one day,’ said Ambrose, looking plaintive. ‘I don’t fully understand—now that you point it out it almost seems too obvious; too easy—and yet why would one anarchist add to the work of another like this? And why write it down at all?’

  ‘The only reason for committing this information to writing,’ I replied, ‘would be the importance of precision. The exact locations must be important for some reason. I very much doubt we have all the information we require, but it is a start. Look at the original pocketbook that was recovered from Marble Arch, and the scrap of paper—I should have seen it before
. They are not written by the same hand.’

  Ambrose examined the items and nodded. ‘I think I know what you’re getting at,’ he said. ‘You think that the last coordinate was written by the same person who wrote the other four on that scrap of paper.’

  ‘It will need closer scrutiny, but yes, I believe so.’

  ‘So, the anarchists who carried out the last three attacks were not only targeting specific areas, but were also noting instructions for others in their order. Am I right?’

  ‘That is my train of thought, yes,’ I said. ‘They carry out atrocities in groups of three, with the fourth coordinate always being their pre-arranged exit point. The group also notes a point of significance in the pocketbook for the next group of anarchists.’

  ‘So, by taking the book,’ began Ambrose, ‘we have perhaps foiled their next step altogether?’

  ‘I hope so, but we cannot rely on it. What if the targets are all predetermined, and only added to the notebook once the group has surveyed it and gathered intelligence? If that were the case, they may still go ahead with their next attack because they may well believe that we have not cracked their code, and are thus ignorant of their plans. Assuming that’s the case, we have only two questions left to ask: When are they planning to strike, and is this new coordinate the starting point for new attacks, or the escape route?’

  * * *

  Despite my chiding, Ambrose had refused to leave with me for the East End until we had taken tea. ‘I’m positively famished, my dear chap,’ he had said, before slipping one of the junior stewards a shilling and sending him off to fetch us some cold cuts. We had missed afternoon tea, but the staff at the club were always willing to make special arrangements for members, even rogues like Ambrose Hanlocke.

  We found ourselves a corner of the deserted dining room to talk, and Ambrose soon raised the matter of my recent misfortune at the hands of the three cutpurses he had rescued me from. What he was really interested in, however, was my reaction to Archie McGrath’s treatment, and I knew that there was no point in hiding the truth, as Ambrose had been there to witness my fear and hatred of opium first hand.

  ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of, old chap,’ he said, seeing the colour rush from my cheeks. ‘I know that you had a bad time of it in the army, and God knows I doubt I’d have held out half as long as you. But you do have to take it easy; I think Sir Toby has put you back on active duty a bit too soon.’

  I bristled at the term ‘active duty’ quite vigorously, for I did not feel like a soldier, not yet. Though I was gladly serving my country, it was on a voluntary basis, or so I told myself.

  ‘You’d have me go home and pretend that none of this was happening?’ I asked.

  ‘Not at all—you’ve already shown you have an aptitude for all this adventuring business,’ Ambrose replied. ‘It’s just that… well… I’ve been at this game a long time. You see things—do things—that aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, if you take my meaning. Maybe those thugs you encountered were a way of telling you to slow down a little, you know? Neither of us are spring chickens, and if you’ve lost your edge, even a little bit… you don’t want to be knee-deep in the mire and find yourself wanting.’

  ‘I’ve seen plenty of action, and maybe I’m not as sharp as I once was, but I’m certainly wiser. You know the worst thing about my captivity? Knowing that whatever was going on outside, I wasn’t a part of it; there was nothing I could do to help my regiment, or my country… Now I’m here, and I have a mission of real importance, I don’t intend to turn my back on it and put my feet up. My father was a member of Apollo Lycea, and he wouldn’t have shied away from his duty, whatever the cost.’

  Ambrose looked thoughtful—almost sad, I thought—and then he said to me: ‘I met your father once, you know.’ Again, I do not know why such a simple remark affected me so, but I looked at Ambrose with expectation. All he said was: ‘Believe me, John, you are not your father’s son.’

  The words were delivered kindly, but I neither knew how to take them, nor how to respond. I swigged the last dregs of my tea and got to my feet, picked up my hat and coat, and turned to leave. Ambrose, swift as a cat, was standing next to me, placing a hand on my shoulder. I turned to him with a face like stone.

  ‘John… I have spoken out of turn. I’m sorry. I was trying to say that I think you’re a good fellow, with a good heart, but I’ve made a royal hash of it. Can you accept the apology of a blustering cad, and we’ll talk no more of it?’ He held out his hand. I paused for only a moment before shaking his hand, giving him a half-smile, and leaving the club with him. For better or for worse, Ambrose Hanlocke and I were in it together.

  * * *

  Somewhat delayed in our endeavours, we set off for Commercial Road, in the notorious Whitechapel district. It was past five o’clock by the time we approached our destination. The weather was mercifully mild, and though a chilly breeze blew periodically along the high street and whistled in at the windows of our cab, we would be spared the downpours of the previous day. The route to Whitechapel had been a circuitous one, as our cabbie had been forced to take more than one detour to avoid blocked streets. Many shopkeepers and local markets were packing away for the day, and the number of carts and workmen in the streets made progress by road somewhat laborious. I eyed Ambrose accusingly—were it not for him being a slave to his appetite, we would have made the journey in nearly half the time. Whilst the map coordinates were reasonably accurate, it still gave us more than a quarter of a mile of Commercial Road properties to investigate. Therefore, we had narrowed down our search by trawling through the clerks’ list of addresses, and had come up with two in this area. The first was noted as a spiritualist medium, a table-rapper of some small repute, going by the name of Madam Walpole, while the second was a man who was unknown to Apollo Lycea, noted in the book as Mr. F.W. Jeffers.

  The district itself lived up to Ambrose’s poor assessment of it. Drunkards, both male and female, walked the streets, along with tramps, bawds and luridly dressed ‘ladies of the night’, who plied their trade even in broad daylight. Litter, grime and detritus covered the thoroughfares, accumulating in alleyways and around the bases of rusting streetlamps like pile of autumn leaves. The unmistakeable smells of rotten vegetables and open drains mingled with the less distasteful odours of hot potatoes and meat pies from nearby handcarts.

  We came to Madam Walpole’s home first. The terraced house had a pronounced slouch, and no doubt the occupants were glad that it was sandwiched between a funeral parlour and a derelict photography studio, for otherwise the ramshackle home would almost certainly have collapsed. Nonetheless, the dilapidated little house looked out of place, almost squeezed into a gap that should not have been there. Ambrose paused uncomfortably as a prompt that I should pay the cabbie, which I duly did. I also promised him an extra shilling atop his usual rate if he would wait for us for a short time.

  We climbed three steep, uneven steps to a front door of dubious prospect, and gave three sharp raps on the iron knocker. It took some time before the door was answered, by a scruffy young woman who, I thought idly, would not be unhandsome were she to brush her hair and don clean clothes.

  ‘’Elp you, sirs?’ she asked, suspiciously.

  Ambrose took the lead before I could say anything, although not in the manner I had expected. He removed his hat and gave a short bow of the head. ‘My good lady, we are come to visit Madam Walpole. Is the mistress at home?’

  ‘Mistress, indeed,’ replied the young woman, impudently. ‘No. She’s aht.’

  Ambrose gave me the briefest sideways glance, before readdressing the girl. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he asked.

  ‘I said she’s aht,’ she repeated. Then, upon seeing Ambrose’s pained expression, she adopted the Queen’s and said, as if to a simpleton: ‘Out! Don’t you understand English or somefink?’

  ‘I, erm, that is—’ stuttered Ambrose, whose roguish credentials I was now beginning to doubt.

  ‘Look, young lady,�
� I intervened, more directly, ‘we have come to call on Madam Walpole regarding a professional matter. Neither she, nor you, are in any trouble whatsoever, but it is most urgent that we seek her aid. Now, if she is not at home, do you know when she will return?’

  ‘Like I said,’ she uttered, with sullen impudence, ‘She’s…’

  ‘Yes, yes, “aht”, I’m sure we understand,’ Ambrose snapped. ‘Good day to you.’ He turned as if to leave, his impatience agitating me greatly. We had not even managed to establish when the elusive Madam Walpole would be returning home. I turned awkwardly, doffing my hat to the cold-eyed girl as I did so, when I heard a sash window scraping open above us. Ambrose and I both looked up to see a small, middle-aged woman with curlers in her hair looking down at us. ‘What’s going on down there?’ she barked. ‘Who’re you?’

  Ambrose once more took the lead, and I groaned inside for fear that he would rankle this woman too. ‘My dear lady, we have come in search of the famous Madam Walpole regarding a matter of some import. Are you she?’

  ‘Might be,’ she replied, guardedly.

  ‘Then it seems that your, ah, sister here has made some error. She believed you to be out. Fortunately for all of us, here you are. May we come in and have a word? We will not take much of your time, I assure you.’

  ‘Sister, is it?’ she chuckled. ‘Well, I s’pose you gentlemen had better come in. Molly!’ she snapped to the girl at the door. ‘Let ’em in and get some tea on.’

  * * *

  For the most part, the house was as meagre within as it was without. Ambrose and I sat on a worn, floral-patterned sofa opposite Madam Walpole in a shabbily furnished sitting room. There was no fire in the grate, and no coal in the scuttle. As we had entered the small house, Molly had made a point of closing a pair of double doors that led from the sitting room to a parlour at the back of the house. Before the doors had closed, I had spied a room of more pleasant appointment, with a large circular dining table in its centre and deep red drapes around every wall, lending it a dark and somewhat theatrical aspect. It had been a fair assumption that the room was the place where Madam Walpole held her séances, and she said as much whilst Molly ventured to the kitchen to make us tea.