By Gaslight

by Steven Price

  Could his father have killed Edward Shade? He knew what Margaret would say: I loved your father too, Willie. But that man was capable of anything.

  He had been fifteen years old when he fell in love with the eldest Ashling sister, blond, vain, flighty. For months he could not see beyond her dazzle to any girl else. Dreamily he would skip his classes at Notre Dame, buy her chocolates, roses. That sister’s name was Alice and she would swoon in his arms and brush her lips against his jaw like a heroine in an English novel and he felt his own new raw strength course through his arms as she did so. Alice Ashling would go riding with two of her schoolgirl friends in the public parks in the afternoons and William would stand with a hand on the trunk of a sycamore watching her canter and turn and canter past again. Staring at him boldly, smiling the while, her girlfriends all a-giggle and calling her away.

  That was in October of 1861. In November she danced all evening with an older boy of nineteen, already an officer in the Northern Cavalry, while William lurked at the edge of the waxed floor and crushed the flower in his lapel. She had arrived at the ball on his arm but she would be leaving on another’s. William was desperate, devastated. Visions of his own enlistment in D.C. where his father was gathering intelligence, visions of some heroic act under fire in a cornfield of Virginia. All of it nonsense. When he rubbed at his wet eyes and turned away there was a younger girl standing beside him, white dress, flowers wreathing her hair.

  He almost knew her. The night deepened, the dance floor tilted and drained away. Together they watched Alice curl into the officer’s arms.

  That’s the wrong sister for you, Pinkerton, the girl said.

  And then he knew her. Margaret Ashling, fourteen years old, quiet and lovely, smiling a sardonic smile at him from under her lashes. She held out a tiny hand for him to take. To his surprise he took it.

  How lucky you are, sir, that I happen to be an excellent dancer, she said, guiding him towards the bandshell while the violins swelled around them. You just follow my lead.

  Margaret loved to tell that story. Whenever friends asked how he had found her she would give William a cool smile and say, Oh, he didn’t find me—

  At which he would shake his head, reach for her hand, and laugh. How did I find her? he would grin. I found her difficult, and stubborn, and headstrong—

  At the hotel desk in the green light under the low-hanging fronds he rapped a knuckle on the counter and waited but when the clerk checked there had not yet been any telegram from Chicago. He frowned. He was more interested than ever to hear if his description of Adam Foole’s manservant matched any in the Agency files and if there were any record of his employer Foole. He thought of that man’s slight frame, his shadowed skin, the eyes like amethysts pressed in wax. As the doorman held open the great glass door and the cold roar of the street sucked at him he buttoned his chesterfield and hunched his shoulders and strode through. Even after twenty years of detective work he found himself confused by his own nature and the havoc it could wreak. He would confess freely his fascination with the criminal world, his fondness for rogues of all stripes, his equally determined desire to mete out justice in a fist or at the end of a rope. Margaret thought his fearlessness, his introspection, his restlessness all emergent from the same dark and molten core: a love for a father whom he did not think loved him rightly back. It’s a hard thing, learning to love the man you are, she would tell him, running her fingers through his hair of a night. Goodness isn’t dependent on anyone’s approval, Willie.

  William jogged across the street, pushed through into the warm restaurant with its Restoration-era mouldings and steamed windows. A wood fire was burning in a great hearth at either end of the dining room, bracketing the empty tables. What he wanted was to talk to Margaret about the man Foole. What he wanted to chart was the cast of her silence. He was seated at the far end of the room with his back to the fire and his deep-set eyes watching the door through force of habit when the waiter came, fussed, went. Adam Foole’s mention of his father and Shade would not let him alone. He thought it likely he was being manipulated and yet the man claimed an intimacy with Charlotte Reckitt and she of anyone might have known how Shade died. William frowned. He was a man who trusted his gut over his head and had learned to do so by measuring the quarts of his own blood spilled. There were facts and then there were facts, he knew. If you draw a spade, his father liked to say, don’t try to play clubs.

  He unfolded his napkin across his lap and studied the tablecloth and asked himself, as he had asked his entire life, what his father would do.

  The sky was white, a white sun burning a sightless funnel through the haze. He caught John Shore in the narrow lane of Great Scotland Yard, just leaving. A cold wind crackled around them, riffled the loose papers stuffed under Shore’s elbow. The chief inspector shook his harried head, glanced anxiously in the direction he had been proceeding.

  Jonathan Cooper? he muttered. Aye, I remember him. Whole generation of us came up in the Yard hearing stories about Cooper. The Saracen, he was called. What’s your interest in it?

  William shrugged. It’s probably nothing.

  I’m late as it is. Walk with me. Shore started off at a clip and William jogged to catch him. Maybe ten, fifteen years back, he said, heads started turning up in the Thames. Nineteen of them in the end, one shy of a nice round number. The chief shrugged, his face red, breathing hard as he went. A lot of murders go unreported around here, a lot go unsolved, a lot are never written up. At least they used not to be. The curious thing about these heads is that the bodies were never found. And the heads all had the same kind of cut, some rough ragged chop. I’m told it was a very distinct cut.

  Like the Reckitt woman’s?

  Shore slowed. Is that what this is about?

  A market cart clattered past, trailing cuttings of cabbage. Two small urchins with rags tied to their feet with twine were following, darting between the legs of the horses, snatching up the leavings in the cold.

  So he was real, William said. Cooper existed.

  Cooper didn’t do in Charlotte Reckitt, William. The man’s been disappeared for ten years at least. He’s in his grave by now.

  Is that fact?

  Shore waved at a passing hansom but it did not stop. I never saw a body, if that’s what you mean. But I’d stake my reputation on it. A man like that doesn’t just stop killing. What are you up to, William?

  William did not answer. He said, instead, What can you tell me about him?

  Not much. He was a big bugger. He served in the Crimea with a raiding force of bashi-bazouks. They’d burn the Russian villages and cut off the heads of the Christians. Women, children, all of them. The heads were thrown into the Danube. Floated the whole bloody way down to Varna where the English and French were camped and our lads started picking them out of the reeds with boathooks. But by the time the raiding party got back to Varna the cholera had struck and the French camp had set up pickets to keep the English sick out. I guess it was a mess. I guess the army wanted to keep the whole matter quiet. Cooper wasn’t court-martialled but he fell sick on the boats when the army sailed for Alma. He must have recovered in time to go into the fight or maybe the army just thought it was an easy way to solve the problem of what to do with him. A musket ball tore up his face in the first assault. Entered through his left cheek and came out at the right corner of his mouth and took twenty-three of his teeth and a good part of his tongue with it. That was in a vineyard before they’d even reached the river. He’d climbed a tree to get a bead on the enemy. It’s said he was left hanging there for hours by his feet before he managed to get down and go looking for a staff surgeon. Somehow he didn’t die. Shore gave him a long, tired, appraising look. You really want to know about this?

  A hansom cab stopped at the curb and Shore clambered up. Leave it alone, William, he called over his shoulder. That’s my advice to you.

  William held up a hand and took a step back. The driver leaned forward with his loop of reins and then o
n a whim William stepped swiftly up and set a hand on the door and leaned in. One last thing. Ever hear of a man named Adam Foole?

  Adam Foole?

  Clear, the driver called angrily. Clear off now.

  Foole, yes, William said.

  Shore grunted. Never heard of him. What’s he?

  William started to answer and then looked off down the street and let go the hansom and stepped back. No one, he said.

  In the afternoon he returned to the Grand Metropolitan. The polished marble columns, the hush, foreknuckles rapping twice on a mahogany counter while across the gleaming floor a gentleman under a palm lifted his face from a newspaper, startled spectacles glinting. The desk clerk was deferential, tugging at his cuffs. Ah, still no telegram from Chicago, Mr. Pinkerton, sir, no. William cracked the vertebrae in his neck wondering if the delay meant much or little. Upstairs in his rooms he scraped his shoes tiredly and did not take off his chesterfield but collected the files on Shade and Charlotte Reckitt and carried them down to the smoking lounge on the second floor. High windows, long Persian carpets, long bulleted sofas empty at that hour but for two gentlemen in a blue cloud of smoke well out of earshot. William seated himself before the fire, the day’s whiteness blooming through the curtains. He was looking for any word or description that might match Adam Foole in either file or verify the man’s accusation but after an hour he still had nothing. Was Foole speaking as an accomplice of Shade? He thought it unlikely. Charlotte Reckitt, he knew, was the probable source of the man’s story. And yet Foole’s calling Shade a boy had the ring of truth to it. It wasn’t the war that killed that boy. William unfolded his legs and plicked at the knees of his trousers and fanned the files out before him. He picked up the rogues’ gallery photograph of Charlotte Reckitt. Youthful, cold, brutal. Hooded eyes unkind, a wide mouth, raven hair pulled flat for the camera. He shut the file.

  Whatever else, he had not lied about the Saracen. William knew that did not make the man or his other claims trustworthy. But it was something. As for Cooper—the Saracen—if there was any truth to him at all then he was worth attending to. That would require blueprints to the sewer tunnels downriver from Blackfriars and William wondered briefly at which city offices he ought to make his inquiries. He knew Breck would be prying apart the microscopic secrets of Charlotte Reckitt’s flesh even now and turning up some hint, perhaps, as to the Saracen’s whereabouts. William started to loosen his collar and then he caught himself and stared at the carpet, smiling angrily. The Saracen’s whereabouts, he thought. So you believe it after all.

  Just then the gentlemen’s laughter drifted across, bright, watery, false. William grimaced. He realized what it was about the man Foole: ten years gone and their marriage never realized and what would he, William, do, were Margaret to be killed? Would his heart too chart such disaster, such ruin? The dignified grief in the man astonished him. He told himself he would risk the same given such calamity but he could not be sure. All this he saw without seeing and he thought of his ancient father in the reading room of the new city library in Chicago, turning the pages of some report that did not require his attention, the stiff watermarked papers rustling, a vision two years past and that man never again to be seen on this earth. William belled his tongue against his cheek, closed his eyes. A man knows nothing of himself, he thought, until he is tested.

  And then?

  He opened his eyes. And then god help him, whatsoever he choose to do.

  Long nights, wearying nights. On Tuesday William rose tiredly and washed and dressed and ate and at ten o’clock made his way by hansom to the Metropolitan Board of Works. The mist was brown, murky, room after room of smouldering fog closing up around him.

  London, he thought in disgust, wiping his handkerchief along his throat.

  The traffic was thick, the going slow. He got down at Trafalgar Square and walked the Mall in haste until he reached Spring Gardens. He entered the Works building already irritated and tired. At the reception office he gave his card and asked to see the official responsible for sewer oversight and explained in a low flat voice that it was a police matter. The clerk regarded him skeptically but directed him along the hall to the next department and there he again gave his card and explained his purpose and there he was told, again unimpressed, to seat himself and wait.

  An old woman was asleep on the chair facing him, black hairs asprout her upper lip, her low snoring somehow consoling. He closed his own eyes. There was something in that old woman, some resigned fortitude, that made William think of his mother. An hour passed, clerks came and went. As the second hour closed he rose again and again inquired and was again told, coldly, that he would be attended to in time. He wondered if he should have enlisted Shore’s help. At noon the old lady snorted awake and slid out from under her feet a small hamper that contained a roll of bread, a twist of sausage. She ate with her eyes downcast, her dry thin lips chewing rapidly like a rabbit. Then she leaned back, folded her arms, shut her eyes again.

  At last a rumpled clerk came out, blinking. William glimpsed behind him rows of copying clerks, waistcoated, in gartered sleeves, their diligent heads bowed. The man was clutching the door handle in an oddly effeminate manner, wrist turned back, William’s card held out before him in his other hand as if it were an unwashed thing.

  Mr. Pinkerton? he called. Peering about as if William were not the only man there.

  William got to his feet, his muscles stiff. Here, he said. He stepped forward, looming, he lowered his voice. I’ve come about plans for the sewer tunnels—

  I know what you are here for, sir. The Bazalgette plans, yes?

  William did not know what a Bazalgette might be.

  It is a police matter, you say?

  William nodded. There was in the clerk’s fussiness something he instantly disliked. Chief Inspector Shore sent me, he lied.

  The clerk studied his size, his callused hands, his long dark moustaches. His fingernail flicked William’s visiting card, flick, flick. But you are not with the Yard yourself?

  Obviously not, William said, impatience creeping into his voice.

  The man raised his eyebrows.

  I’m an American detective, William added, forcing himself calm. Our agencies are working a case together. He felt a growing irritation with the small man, his self-importance. For god’s sake, man, I’ve been waiting here hours. Is all this necessary? You can show me a copy of the plans or you can show me to your superior. Either will do.

  There was a smugness to the clerk as he apologized. But surely Mr. Shore knows that the MBW does not keep its plans at Spring Gardens, Mr. Pinkerton, he said. I can’t imagine what he was thinking, sending you here.

  What are you saying?

  You’ll want the Public Record Office. On Chancery Lane, sir. The public consulting room there, for research matters. The clerk gave him a veiled shake of the head that made William want to punch him. You’ll bring your credentials, of course, sir. Perhaps a letter of introduction from Mr. Shore would be of assistance.

  The hell with the letter, William told himself. The hell with the damned English bureaucracy. An hour later he was entering the Public Record Office off Chancery Lane still in a black mood, the winter afternoon already extinguishing behind him. An old man in woollens with the fingers cut out and blowing on his hands for the cold squinted up at him, his pale eyes unfocused.

  Can’t never get warm in here, he whispered, not never, sir, no.

  William feared him mad but then the man cleared his throat and said, in a high-pitched voice, Yes, yes, and what is it you come for then?

  Records of public works? William said cautiously. Sewer plans, actually.

  The old man nodded and led him down a long gaslit hall to an empty room filled with tables, haphazard chairs, muttering the while. You a writer too then? he asked.

  A what?

  That Mr. Dickens come here regular, once. I remember him well, I do. We used to talk about songbirds. We both liked them birds of a season. Fascinati
ng man, that Mr. Dickens. Don’t much care for his writing though.

  William shook his head, removed his hat, set it down on a table. Is there someone I can see about plans for the sewer lines? he asked. It’s a police matter.

  Ah, them sewer lines always is, the old man said mysteriously.

  But he disappeared with William’s card back into the hall and shortly afterwards a plump hairless man in a green waistcoat came through, cod-like eyes abulge. William started to explain himself again but the man waved William’s visiting card in his direction and held up a hand to stop him.

  I know who you are, Mr. Pinkerton, sir, he said. What is it I can do for you?

  William liked him at once. The plans he brought out from a locked records room were rolled and tied off with twine and the man set them down on a tilted drafting table and clipped them into place and smoothed them down with soft fingertips. He said, It’s not the main line but the street lines you’ll be wanting, sir. These are the drafted plans drawn up by Mr. Bazalgette, sir, as he had hoped to build the lines. But the construction often had to make do, sir. What’s here and what’s down there, he said, jabbing a squat thumb at the floor, are not really the same thing at all. Oh it’s no one’s fault, sir. There were chambers and rooms and old sewer tunnels already in place in some instances. They just used what they could find, shored it up. Following the spirit of the plans the while. You said it was for police use?