As though in response to these concerns, Gruner’s attention was arrested by a copy of De Forel’s 1975 facsimile edition of the Fabrica of Andreas Vesalius, in very good condition, the boards undamaged and the binding strong. Gruner never ceased to be impressed by the efforts of these pioneers of anatomical drawing—not only by the beauty and accuracy of their compositions, but the lengths to which they went to secure bodies for their explorations, and the conditions under which they were forced to work: the filth, the blood, the stench. He stopped at one particularly striking plate of a woman, her interiority revealed from her throat to her reproductive organs, and held up the book so that the plate and De Jaager’s young scout were side by side in his view, as though she, reflected in the glass, were also being exposed to this intimate gaze.
“How much?” he asked the owner of the stall, a widow named Bock. He had bought from her in the past, and found her to be optimistic in her valuations. She now named a price that was at least a third more than the book was worth, and was surprised when he did not quibble.
“Would you like me to wrap it for you, mijnheer?” she asked.
“No, mevrouw, but it is a gift for someone—a surprise. I would be grateful if you could provide me with a card upon which to write a greeting.”
Bock obliged with a cheap photographic image of the Flower Market, and watched as Gruner wrote on the blank side in his meticulous hand. When he was done, he added it to the page in the book depicting the anatomized woman, and returned the whole to Bock.
“One last favor,” he said. “I should like you to present the book to the young lady in the red summer dress, with my compliments.”
Mevrouw Bock could not help but fix him with a look that suggested there was no fool like an old fool, particularly one that looked and smelled as Gruner did, but a sale was a sale, and the passage had been quiet that day.
“Now?” she asked.
“As quickly as possible.”
“As you wish, mijnheer.”
Gruner moved on to the next stall. He watched as Bock approached the girl, presented her with the book, and pointed to him. The girl looked surprised, and Gruner gave her a small, formal bow before continuing on his way. As he turned left at the end of the passage, he saw that the girl was no longer following him, but had remained where she was. In one hand she held the book, in the other the card on which Gruner had written two words.
Voorzichtig zijn.
Beware.
CHAPTER LXI
Bob Johnston dropped the bags of books at his hotel, and took the opportunity to use the bathroom, his bladder having been sorely tested by the combination of unfamiliar exercise and a pot of English breakfast tea. (And who would have guessed, after decades of bags dropped into disposable containers, filled with water heated to a temperature appropriate only for coffee, that tea could taste so good? Johnston had been so overcome by the experience that his purchases now included, in addition to books, a sturdy red teapot and a tin box of tea leaves.) Parker had put him up at Hazlitt’s in Soho, and it gave Johnston no small pleasure to be domiciled in a building with such august literary associations.
He was still shaken by his experience at St. Mary’s, to such a degree that he took time to examine his mouth and throat in the bathroom mirror, aided by a small Maglite, expecting to glimpse lesions appearing from the tender tissue. But he saw only the flesh of an aging man, a dupe whose imagination could be played upon by images in glass.
No, he thought, it’s more than that. The only thing worse than believing in the truth of the Atlas is not to believe.
With his bladder blessedly empty, and a bag folded into a pocket—just in case, because one never knew when a book might call one’s name—Johnston consulted his map of the London Underground. He traced his intended route, and headed for the evocatively—and not inaptly—named World’s End.
* * *
THE BUILDING AT WORLD’S End, Chelsea, formerly occupied by Dunwidge & Daughter, Booksellers, still stood, although it was now a private home that had been in the ownership of the same family since the 1930s. The dwelling, part of a terrace of fine red-brick houses, bore no trace of the fire that had consumed Eliza Dunwidge, the titular daughter, along with most of the firm’s stock of occult volumes. Eliza’s father had also died that same night, both possibly by the same hand: that of the notorious killer John Soter.
The more Johnston explored Soter’s history, the harder he found it to accept that Soter could have killed men, women, and children in a concentrated spree caused, if contemporary reports were to be believed, by psychological damage incurred while fighting the Germans in France. With the assistance of an amateur British military historian named Billy McLean—a man so reclusive he made Johnston seem positively gregarious by comparison—he had obtained all extant copies of Soter’s medical records from Craiglockhart Hospital. These indicated that, in the opinion of the psychiatrists dealing with him, the profound trauma from which Soter suffered was a combination both of his experiences on the Western Front and the loss of his family to a German bombing raid. Yet Soter exhibited no signs of anger, and staff had never been given cause to restrain him for violent behavior. He displayed only courtesy and solicitude toward the nurses responsible for his day-to-day care, and was unfailingly polite to all visitors, although he was found to be unable to refrain from weeping if given the opportunity to converse with the very young.
Was it possible that, following his discharge from the hospital, Soter’s condition had deteriorated to such an extent as to cause him, either through rage or delusion, to kill two children, a boy and a girl, in addition to a prostitute and at least three others, including the Dunwidges? Johnston had no expertise in these matters, and so could not offer an opinion that would have held up in a court of law. All he could say was that John Soter did not seem like such a man.
Johnston climbed the steps of the house and rang the bell. He had been in touch with the owner by e-mail, notifying her of his interest in the fire that had once reduced the property to a shell, and was pleasantly surprised to find her willing to admit him to her home. The door was opened by a cheerful, elegant woman in her fifties, who introduced herself as Rosanna Bellingham—“the matriarch,” as she described herself, the patriarch, Norman, having been deceased for some years, following thirty years of marriage that had left her with “five children, and many happy memories.” All this Johnston learned while he was still in the process of taking off his coat, which overwhelmed him slightly. He said that he was glad to hear their union had been joyful, and Bellingham asked him if he happened to be married. He replied that he had never been so fortunate, and suddenly found the widow appraising him in a new way, like one who has ventured out for a walk with no intention of buying a car, only to have her eye unexpectedly caught by a vintage model. To be honest, it made Johnston nervous.
Bellingham led him to a country-style kitchen, where she offered him his choice of tea, coffee, or “something stronger,” adding that she always enjoyed “a small one” at this time of the evening. Since it was already growing dark, Johnston opined that something stronger might well be in order. Bellingham poured two glasses of gin that did considerable damage to their parent bottle, added splashes of tonic that did not, dropped in a couple of cubes of ice by hand, along with slices of lemon, and presented Johnston with his share of the finished product.
“If that’s a small one,” said Johnston, “what does a large one look like?”
Rosanna Bellingham tapped the bottle. “It saves the trouble of washing a glass.”
Johnston tried to decide if she was joking or not. It concerned him that she probably wasn’t. He took a sip of his drink, and decided to wait a while before taking another in the hope that the ice might yet dilute the contents sufficiently to enable him to stand up again without immediately falling over.
“I’m grateful to you for allowing me to visit,” he said.
“You weren’t expecting me to agree, were you?”
“
No, I wasn’t.”
Rosanna tested her own drink. Johnston heard the ice clink against the side of the glass, and noticed for the first time that the woman’s hand was shaking slightly. He might have put it down to nerves, or even, given the generosity of her pour, incipient alcoholism, but she didn’t have the look of someone with a problem, or not one that involved liquor. Her eyes were clear, and her face had none of the bloating and blurring that Johnston associated with those who drank to excess.
“If you’d approached me even two or three months ago with a similar request,” she said, “I’d probably have ignored your e-mail, or sent a polite refusal.”
“May I ask what has changed?”
“This house has changed,” she said.
“In what way?”
“You’ll think me foolish.”
“I can assure you I won’t.”
And he meant it: Johnston had touched fragments of the Fractured Atlas, had seen how they altered the pages of the book in which they were concealed. This world, he now knew, was stranger than he could ever have imagined.
Rosanna Bellingham seemed to accept that he was telling the truth.
“I think something has returned to this place,” she said. “I think it’s being haunted.”
CHAPTER LXII
Louis arrived back at the safe house to discover Parker waiting in the kitchen, his suitcase by his feet. Angel sat at the table, drinking coffee. He looked better for a few hours of rest. Anouk was preparing something in a pot for supper. Whatever it was, it was heavy with paprika.
“Change of plan?” said Louis.
“You and Angel have this in hand,” said Parker. “These are your people, so I suspect you always had. I’m going to London. Join me when you’re done.”
“Johnston?”
“Call it caution. I think I was wrong to let him go on ahead without us. I’ve been feeling that way since we got off the plane at Schiphol.”
Louis shared with Parker what he had learned about Cornelie Gruner from De Jaager, and the three men agreed among them on a plan of action to investigate the activities of the former.
“I’m sorry I won’t get to meet him,” said Parker, as Paulus pulled up outside to take him to the airport—at, Parker hoped, a speed that wouldn’t leave his eyeballs pressed into his brain like raisins in dough.
“Gruner, or De Jaager?”
“On reflection, both.”
“I’ll pass on your regards to De Jaager—and Gruner, although maybe not in the same way.”
“You step carefully.”
“Always do.”
“Except, it seems, when you’re getting shot,” said Anouk, without diverting her attention from the stove.
“Yes,” Louis admitted. “Except then.”
CHAPTER LXIII
Bob Johnston and Rosanna Bellingham stood in the living room of the latter’s home, which was situated on the second floor, at the same level as the front door and hallway, and overlooked the currently empty street.
“Eliza Dunwidge died there,” said Bellingham, pointing to the fireplace. “Her charred remains were found lying half in, half out of the hearth. The fire consumed everything on this level, and most of what’s above, so my grandparents purchased little more than a shell. Only the basement survived intact.”
“Do you think John Soter had anything to do with Eliza’s death?”
“That’s what the papers suggested at the time. My grandparents kept an album of press clippings about it. My grandfather had a ghoulish aspect, and rather relished the notoriety the case brought to his property. I’ve set the album aside. You can take it with you, if you wish. It’s up to you whether you want to return it. Any attachment I had to it has vanished. The newspapers speculated that Soter might have fled abroad in the aftermath, or killed himself out on the Norfolk Broads.”
Just as Soter didn’t strike Johnston as a deranged killer, neither did he seem likely to have taken his own life on the Broads. A man that could survive the carnage of the Somme, and the loss of his wife and children, was not one to despair easily.
“Have you heard of a lawyer named Atol Quayle?” he asked.
“It rings a bell. Wasn’t he John Soter’s occasional employer? Why do you ask?”
“I’m just wondering if anyone by that name has ever tried to contact you.”
“No. I doubt the firm still exists—or does it?”
“It doesn’t seem to,” said Johnston, “but someone out there is continuing to use that identity. He claims to be a retired English lawyer, when he’s not killing people.”
“You didn’t mention that in your original e-mail.”
“I didn’t wish to alarm you.”
“Or were you worried that the mention of killings might have caused me to keep my door closed to you?”
Johnston conceded the point, helped by the absence of any apparent bitterness on Bellingham’s part at this lacuna.
“I must say,” she added, “that you don’t behave like a book scholar. You’re more like a private detective.”
“I’ve been keeping company with one,” said Johnston. “His name is Parker. I think some of his habits may be rubbing off on me, which I find disconcerting.”
He tried the gin again, but suddenly found the taste to be off. He sniffed the air. It smelled of the lilies in the vase by the window, and some kind of subtle scent that he traced to a candle burning in an antique lantern by a second fireplace in the dining room, yet a more pungent odor was underlying both. It reminded him of pork ribs on a barbecue, but not the kind one might care to eat, as though the meat had been spoiled before it was placed over the coals, and no one had noticed until it started to char.
“You smell it, don’t you?” said Bellingham.
Johnston saw no point in denial.
“What is it?”
Bellingham took a step away from the fireplace, and said, “It’s her.”
CHAPTER LXIV
The Principal Backer sat in one of the Colonial Club’s smaller meeting rooms, his attention mostly fixed on the screen by the far wall. A younger relative of one of the senior members—a grandson, or perhaps a nephew; the Principal Backer was not entirely sure which, and didn’t care much either way—had written a book on the actor Charles Chaplin. The member’s peers, or those who were sufficiently bored, or desirous of remaining in his good graces, had convened to listen to a presentation, and attend a screening of one of Chaplin’s films.
The Principal Backer was not particularly close to the member in question, a semi-retired investment banker named Reesen. It was rumored in the Colonial that Reesen’s forebears had changed their name from Rosenfeld back in the early nineteenth century, some fifty years before the family began to acquire the wealth that would ultimately elevate it to a position of authority and influence in the Commonwealth. A surname like Rosenfeld would have been sufficient to deny one membership of the Colonial until relatively recently, the club not being notable for the welcome it offered to Semites, Negroes, Hispanics, or Orientals, not unless they were scrubbing pots or cleaning toilets. Times had changed since then, some vestiges of progressive thinking having infiltrated even the hidebound environs of the Colonial, although one would still not have required more than two hands to count those members who were not white Protestants.
Reesen interested the Principal Backer. He was a liberal by the club’s standards—liberal even by the standards of most of his own family—and supported causes of which many other members would not have approved, but maintained a relatively low profile within the Colonial itself. He generally dined and drank alone, and had shown no inclination to be nominated to the Central Committee—a body monolithic in its avowed resistance to change—instead being content to regard it from afar with a degree of amused contempt. The Principal Backer was curious, therefore, to see who might feel compelled to support this latest literary venture by Reesen’s relative, and was surprised by some of those in attendance, and the apparent friendliness, even familiar
ity, with which they greeted their host, including those whose beliefs differed radically from his. It added to the Principal Backer’s understanding of the complex currents of influence and obligation lying behind the club’s façade.
The short film itself was mildly amusing, although the Principal Backer struggled with silent comedy. It struck him that Chaplin, a Communist sympathizer, would have been blackballed by the Colonial had he applied for membership, and those in the audience who were laughing loudest at the antics of the Little Tramp, and responding with damp-eyed emotion to the film’s more sentimental moments, were the same men who would step over him if he were discovered lying on the street.
One of the club’s porters discreetly entered the room, located the Principal Backer, and informed him that Miriam, his niece, had left a message requesting that he call her. This required the Principal Backer to leave the presentation, since members were permitted to use cell phones only in the courtyard garden. Even had a member wished to break this rule, he (the Colonial, like most such establishments, being a predominantly male domain) would have been prevented from doing so by the building’s security shielding, which blocked all such signals. The Principal Backer entered the courtyard, discovered it to be empty, and dialed the relevant number, even though he had no niece named Miriam, no nieces at all.
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