* * *
It was Thomas Bowyer who found Black Mary’s body, when he came to collect the rent for John McCarthy—to collect it, but more likely to evict Black Mary when she did not have the means to pay, for by then she was almost thirty shillings in arrears. He glimpsed the corpse through the window, and summoned the Metropolitan Police. Because of the extent of the mutilation, and the general fear of the Ripper that was prevalent at the time, Miller’s Court was quickly poisoned with police: Sergeant Badham, who had helped to transport the body of Annie Chapman, the Ripper’s second victim, from Hanbury Street earlier that same year; Chief Inspector Abberline of Scotland Yard, who was responsible for leading the team of detectives hunting the Ripper; the Irishman Anderson, who was an assistant commissioner; Edmund Reid, the famous aeronaut and head of the Criminal Investigation Division at Whitechapel; and Superintendent Thomas Arnold of H Division, who had fought in the Crimean War, and of whom it was whispered that he loved Semites more than his own kind.
Every inhabitant of Miller’s Court was questioned, but Maggs, like the rest, could tell the police little. He had heard Black Mary singing shortly after midnight, and noticed a woman in the yard at about this time, but could offer nothing more.
“A woman?” said Superintendent Arnold. “Are you sure?”
“As sure as a man can be,” said Maggs.
“Did you see her face?”
“No, for it was dark.”
“But a woman?”
“Yes, I would swear to it.”
Superintendent Arnold did not speak again, but Maggs thought he appeared troubled. Later, before he left the scene, Arnold knocked on the door of Maggs’s room to confirm what had been said earlier: a woman, standing still, listening to Black Mary’s death song.
* * *
Now we come to the meat of it.
Two days later, a curious incident occurred. Maggs was returning from Billingsgate to his room, a lightness to his step since he had just that evening secured better lodgings nearby, Black Mary’s murder having drained Miller’s Court of any appeal it might previously have enjoyed as a place of residence. Maggs was stopped by McCarthy, the landlord, who said that a gentleman and lady wished to meet with him. McCarthy spoke nervously, and was politer to Maggs than was usual for such a coarse man. He led Maggs to an empty tenement room, where there waited, as promised, a couple who had no more business being in Miller’s Court than the Queen herself. The man was much the older of the two, and, judging by his garb, either lawyer or undertaker. The woman was dressed entirely in gray, and remarkably beautiful, although hers was a cold allure, as though her features were carved from ice.
The man held in his hands a book, and Maggs recognized it as one of the batch of volumes he had sold to Sotheran’s. Maggs was instantly concerned: McCarthy had not objected to his salvaging of the books, but what if they had been acquired illegally by their previous owner? Ignorance was no defense in the eyes of the law should Maggs be found to have colluded, however unwittingly, in the passing of stolen goods.
The lawyer—for that was indeed what he was—introduced himself as Mr. Bennett Quayle, and his companion as Miss Dea Tacita. He informed Maggs that he had recently purchased the volume in question from Sotheran’s, and was curious as to how Maggs had come by it, since it was one that he had long sought. Maggs briefly explained the circumstances of the book’s discovery, and the lawyer inquired if Maggs might be willing to accompany him and his companion to the tenement in question—in return for a small payment, of course. Maggs readily agreed, and guided them along Dorset Street, this supervision being necessary in order for the gentleman and lady to avoid being sullied by various forms of filth, both animate and inanimate. But when they reached their destination new tenants were already in residence, and the possessions of the previous unfortunate had long been scattered to the four winds.
The lawyer could not hide his disappointment at this news, for it emerged that the book was but one of four linked volumes, and the value of the complete set was considerable. Maggs suggested that the pair find a seat at the Barley Mow, and take a glass to keep out the cold while he made some inquiries. For the next two hours, Maggs scoured Dorset Street and its environs, questioning and searching, bribing and cajoling, until finally he returned to the Barley Mow with the three missing volumes in his possession, and presented them to the lawyer Quayle. This time, his reward was more than a year’s wages at Billingsgate, and Maggs would never set foot in the market again.
At the time of his dying, he probably regretted this decision.
* * *
Quayle and the woman named Dea Tacita—who had spoken not one word since Maggs was introduced to her—accompanied Maggs back to Miller’s Court, despite his willingness to hail for them a hansom cab by the Mow. The notes handed to him by Quayle felt conspicuous, even in his pocket, and he was only glad that the lawyer had passed them to him unnoticed by any of the sharp eyes in the bar, or else he would very rapidly have joined Black Mary in whatever corner of the next world she was currently occupying. As Maggs’s wealth increased, so too had his shame at his lodgings. He was more conscious of the sights, sounds, and smells than ever before, even though it was only weeks since he had shared a verminous crib with half a dozen others. The presence of Quayle and the woman only increased this embarrassment.
And yet.
From the moment he first met her, Maggs had noted the disturbing state of Miss Tacita’s clothing. It was filthy—perhaps not by the standards of the denizens of Miller’s Court, but certainly by those of a lady, or one who aspired to the standards of such. Examined from close quarters, her gray blouse revealed itself to be stained and torn, the hem of her skirt was tattered and caked with the mire of the streets, and the insides of her cuffs were shiny with dirt. She wore perfume, but not a sufficiency of it. She smelled to Maggs like a disinterred corpse.
“I understand you were acquainted with the latest victim of the Ripper,” said Quayle, as they stood in the yard of Miller’s Court, not one foot from where Maggs had seen the silent, stationary woman—a woman, he thought, of whom Miss Dea Tacita reminded him uncomfortably.
“Some say she was no victim of the Ripper,” said Maggs, and instantly regretted his words, although he could not have said why.
“On what basis?” said Quayle, before adding “Speak” when Maggs’s reluctance to continue became too obvious to ignore.
“It’s Superintendent Arnold’s view, not mine.”
The superintendent had returned to Miller’s Court repeatedly since the discovery of Black Mary’s body. Had he been a ghost, it might have been said that he was haunting the place. Once more he had arrived at Maggs’s door, and this time had accepted the offer of a glass to warm his cockles.
“What is this view, exactly?” said Quayle.
“That the wounds to Black Mary’s body were different from those found on the other women.”
“Different, how?”
“More extreme.”
“And what else?”
“That she was younger than the rest. That she was killed in her bed and not on the street.”
Close behind Maggs, Miss Dea Tacita began to hum a tune, one familiar to Maggs.
“Is that the sum total of the superintendent’s suspicions?” said Quayle.
Now, I have said before that Maggs was no liar. A Catholic was Maggs, and one that went regularly to confession, a sacrament he did not take lightly. But on this occasion, he lied, and when he confessed it to the priest, and was asked for details of the nature of the lie, he declined to give them, and his penance was increased by three decades of the rosary as a consequence of his recalcitrant nature.
Because what Arnold had told Maggs, after a second glass loosened his tongue, was that he thought a woman might have killed Black Mary. According to Arnold, some said that Black Mary might once have been the mistress of a wealthy man, an individual of considerable reputation, one who had groomed her since childhood, and on whom she turned her bac
k upon recognizing the depths of his nature. Black Mary had hidden herself from him among the dregs of the city, becoming one with them, her tongue gradually loosening over the years, so that sometimes, when in her cups, she would speak of her “Grand Mister.” Perhaps, Arnold opined, this gentleman had tracked her to Miller’s Court, and sent someone to silence her.
Quayle repeated the question.
“I asked you,” he said, “if that was the total of Arnold’s suspicions?”
“Yes,” said Maggs, while inches from his back, so close that he could feel the heat of her breath, Miss Dea Tacita quietly sang, in a voice far poorer than Black Mary’s, the song entitled “A Violet I Plucked from Mother’s Grave When a Boy.”
“Do you see that church?” said Quayle, and pointed to the spire of Christ Church, like a blade seeking to gut the heavens.
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you know who designed it?”
“Yes, sir. It is some of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s work.”
“What can you tell me of him?”
“Only what I’ve read.”
“Which is?”
“That he was an occultist.”
“Oh,” said Quayle, “he was much more than that. I knew him—”
He caught himself then, did the lawyer, or so Maggs thought.
“Or rather, should I say,” Quayle continued, “I know of him. His churches are sacrificial spaces, but are not all churches, given the nature of the oblation they commemorate?”
“I couldn’t say,” Maggs replied. Miss Dea Tacita was toying with the lapel of his jacket, as though testing the quality of the material, smiling at him as she did so. She had loosened the collar of her blouse, and lamplight from a window caught her exposed, and unwashed, skin. Maggs saw the blood on it, and wondered how much more might be apparent beneath the rest of her clothing. Whoever slaughtered Black Mary must have been ensanguined in the aftermath; better to have removed as much of one’s outer clothing as possible before commencing with such butchery.
“A wise man wouldn’t,” said Quayle. “Are you a wise man, Maggs?”
“I hope so, sir.”
“I hope so, too.”
Quayle handed him an envelope.
“This contains a list of books I should very much like to acquire, along with some suggestions as to the collections in which they might be found, and an advance on your expenses. I have no time to scour, and perhaps I lack the necessary talents. In you, I believe, I may have discovered a virtuoso.”
After only a moment’s hesitation, Maggs accepted the envelope, and was damned.
But had he done otherwise, he would have been dead.
He told me so, and I believed him.
* * *
All this I learned in the days before Maggs’s death. By then he had become entangled beyond extraction with Eliza Dunwidge and her father, as well as with another Quayle, Atol, some descendant or distant cousin of the late Bennett Quayle, although the similarity between the two was quite remarkable, or so Maggs would sometimes remark as his life neared its conclusion, speaking in a way that suggested he was sharing less than he knew, but more than was wise.
He was a tormented man in those last days, was Maggs. He had allowed himself to be used, perhaps from that very first night in Miller’s Court when he accepted the list of books from Bennett Quayle—or Atol Quayle, because sometimes Maggs used those two names interchangeably, as though they were one and the same.
But recently, Maggs confessed, he had made a terrible error. He had agreed to look for a very particular book, he said, an atlas.
No, the Atlas.
Was this his final mistake? It was not.
His last mistake, I suspect, was to have found it.
CHAPTER CX
Parker and Bob Johnston said good night to Angel and Louis in Soho, and began walking back to Hazlitt’s together. Johnston was slightly drunk; not stumbling, or slurring his words, but seemingly with enough alcohol in his system to loosen his inhibitions. He spoke of his family, and his youth—he had served in the U.S. Army, which Parker had not known—and Rosanna Bellingham, the woman who now lived in the building once occupied by the Dunwidges, a house possibly still inhabited by some trace of one of them. It seemed that Bellingham and Johnston were in contact, and had arranged to meet for dinner the following evening.
“You’re coming out of your shell,” said Parker. “Next thing, you’ll start being nice to your customers.”
Johnston let that one pass.
“I’ve spent too much time alone,” he said. “Wasted years.”
He stopped suddenly, and placed a hand on Parker’s arm.
“You know, I worry about you,” he said.
“Do you?”
“You’re like a character in a movie, or a dime store novel—and God knows, I’ve read my share of them. Troubled. Solitary. In pain. But why do you choose to be companionless? I know why I did: because I was an asshole. You, though, you’re not an asshole, and you shouldn’t be without someone. This life passes so quickly. It’s as though I woke up one morning, and I was old. Didn’t matter how I felt, or even whether I looked good or bad for my age. The numbers didn’t lie. I was an old guy, living alone in a bookstore, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been touched by a woman who wasn’t related to me by blood. That’s just wrong.”
Johnston’s hold on Parker’s arm tightened, and, in that instant, he seemed to sober up.
“I know what you’ve been through,” he said. “I know your wife died.”
Yes, she did, but she returned, or something of her did, something hostile and marred, just like whatever it is that waits in Rosanna Bellingham’s home.
“And your daughter.”
Jennifer, who walks through moonlight to visit me, and speaks with her half sister of worlds beyond this one.
“Still, it’s not good to be so alone.”
But I’m not alone—which may, I admit, be part of the problem, because how can a man begin again when all that has gone before somehow persists? How can he endure, and not go mad, except by accepting the reality of his situation?
“I’ll bear it in mind,” said Parker.
Johnston released his grip.
“What the hell do I know?” he said. “I’m trying to date a woman who lives with ghosts.”
And Parker smiled at him.
“Don’t we all?”
CHAPTER CXI
Parker decided to wait until a reasonable hour before calling Ross. The viewing of Christ Church, even if only its exterior, had unsettled him, its oddness skewing his perception of the city of which it was a part.
After some thought, he decided that Angel and Louis should hold off on targeting Sellars, at least until Parker had spoken with Ross. Meanwhile, Bob Johnston’s tame law students had been instructed to investigate the origins of the trust established to administer the funds from the sale of the Quayle property. Johnston was convinced that paperwork was the key to finding Quayle: somewhere, somehow, money was changing hands—Quayle could not have remained concealed for so long without it—and in the modern age, money left a trail. Johnston planned to meet the students for an early lunch later that day at the Jamaica Wine House in St. Michael’s Alley, a pub the book dealer had long wished to visit. The Jampot, as it was known, occupied a nineteenth-century building, but had been in existence since the middle of the seventeenth century, when it became the city’s first coffeehouse. Anyone who could afford the penny admission could enter, drink, mingle, bargain, and gossip. In another age, and another life, Johnston admitted to Parker, he would happily have occupied a corner of a place like the Jampot.
“I think,” Johnston said, as he prepared to leave Hazlitt’s for the day, “that I was born in the wrong era.”
“Doesn’t everyone feel that way, once in a while?” Parker asked.
“Maybe, but I feel that way all the time.”
They were standing together at the door of the hotel, watching London reveal itself to them
. The smell of the air, the texture of the light, the faces of the natives, all were different here. Parker was experiencing it at one remove, as a visitor, yet if he stepped onto the street, and moved with its flow, no one would recognize him as a stranger, a foreign man with a foreign mind. Parker’s grandfather, who had never warmed to urban life, and regarded even Portland, then a city of fewer than 60,000 souls, as a concrete jungle, once told him that all cities were the same, but he was wrong. All great cities were utterly distinct from one another.
Johnston hitched his satchel to his shoulder. “Walk with me, would you? I’d like to see somewhere green.”
Parker fell into step beside him, and they strolled together to Soho Square Gardens, where they settled on a bench with a view of King Charles II’s centuries-old statue.
“I kept working last night, after we got back from the restaurant,” said Johnston.
“And?”
“We know Quayle is trying to complete the Atlas. He believes that when it’s finally unified, it will become the world: whatever is mapped in its pages, whatever version of the universe it represents, will become reality. But it may be that the Atlas has always been influencing this world. It’s a pollutant. In a sense, it’s trying to create the environment most conducive to its own needs, or the needs of whatever created the Atlas to begin with.
“Think of a fracture in a rock face, or even a whole series of fractures, being widened over time, mostly through natural processes, but maybe also by something trapped behind that’s patiently chipping away. Gradually, and inevitably, one of the fractures will grow wide enough to allow that presence to escape, but the process could be accelerated by the intervention of another agency, someone assisting from the other side. Quayle is that agent. The more of the Atlas that’s found, the faster the fracture widens. Find the last pages, and you blow a hole between realities.
A Book of Bones Page 55
