By Gaslight

by Steven Price

  Breck ran his hand along the leather armrest of the chair, a smooth eerie gesture. Did you know, Mr. Pinkerton, there are doors in the Queen’s Treasury covered in human skin? A colleague of mine at the Royal College of Surgeons was showing them to me. Most interesting. Made from the skin of William the Sacrist.

  William removed his gloves and set them in his upturned hat. A saint?

  A thief. Notorious, in the thirteenth century. He stole the royal Treasury and hid it in a bog before vanishing away.

  Not quite vanishing. William sat, the leather crinkling under his weight.

  A sound of muffled voices from the hallway, approaching the office. The door opened and Shore came through, Blackwell in tow. William twisted in his seat but seeing the chief inspector’s eyes something caught in William, some flare of caution.

  Shore grunted. I won’t ask what you’re doing here.

  I came to see you.

  He gave a sharp resigned shrug of his shoulders, not waiting for a reply, and his black mood seemed to ease. Well you might as well stay and hear Dr. Breck out. He crossed to the light stand. The office filled with a soft yellow glow. How did it go at Millbank? Did good Mr. Reckitt give up anything of use? Nothing? Not even to the great American defective?

  Breck gave a strange high-pitched chuckle.

  William shifted in his chair so he could see the two men better. Millbank was, he cleared his throat, interesting. Reckitt hadn’t heard about his niece.

  How did he take it?

  How do you think?

  Shore struggled irritably out of his coat, sat at his desk. Cat’s out of the bag now, I reckon.

  Should I not have said?

  Shore unfastened his cuffs and shoved his sleeves up his forearms as if he were about to reach into a washbasin. Doesn’t matter, he said, but there was in his gesture a kind of furtiveness. William watched him wondering if Blackwell’s insinuations, and Martin Reckitt’s allusions, had muddied his own sense of the man.

  And what about you, Doctor? Shore said. What did you bring me? Something useful, I trust.

  Breck wiped at his lips with a handkerchief. Forensically speaking—

  In plain English, please.

  Breck looked from Shore to William a moment and there was in it a kind of complicity. He said, The hair from the legs is dark at the roots. He took up a slide and held it to the light and then passed it across to Shore. At its ends you will see the colouring to be much paler. Nearly grey in its discoloration, even. Upon examination my assistant detected minuscule traces of sand, sawdust, and coal—

  Shore set the slide down with a soft click on the table. Coal, he murmured.

  Anthracite, to be exact. The sand is more interesting. We found no trace of it in the sacking. It consists of silicate, ferruginous silicate, and quartz. When we split the sawdust with a microtome it turned out to consist of pine and oak.

  You can tell all of this? William said, amazed.

  Breck unhooked his spectacles and held them down before his face as if to peer at the lenses before continuing. The stains on the inside of the sacking that held the legs are also from anthracite, intermingled with traces of mildew, he said. All of this could indicate a location, from which the sacking originated. The sand might offer a possibility as to where the legs were kept prior to being wrapped up.

  I’d like to take this fellow back with me to Chicago, William said with a slow smile. He looked from Shore to Blackwell with his eyebrows raised and then back at Shore.

  I think Mrs. Breck might object to that, sir, Blackwell said.

  Shore grinned. She might not.

  There’s a Mrs. Breck? William said.

  The doctor rose and limped across to the coat rack and took from the pocket of his topcoat a second collodion slide. He said, The three small insects found on the inner fold of the sacking from Southwark Park are anophthalmi. A species of blind beetle. They are quite colourless, quite devoid of pigment.

  Are they from the park?

  No.

  Blind, murmured Blackwell. So they come from under the earth, sir?

  From the dark, to be exact. Taken together with the other fragments it would not seem unlikely that the body was kept for a time in a cellar. I might suggest a vault—

  Except for the sawdust, William said.

  Correct.

  It would seem our killer has gone to ground, Blackwell said.

  Shore gave him an exasperated look.

  Is there anything more? William said. Anything from the torso to help?

  Indeed. The skin was covered with Saccharomyces cerevisiae. A bacterium. Used in the fermenting of alcohol.

  Shore was rubbing at his face, the cords in his thick forearms cabling under the skin. The sawdust—

  Suggests this cellar must also hold firewood. Or perhaps even be used for sawing it.

  It’s a pub, Blackwell said suddenly.

  Aye.

  This will be a popular assignment, William said with a wry smile. He crossed to the far wall and studied the big city map. He drew a line from Edgware Road down to Southwark Park and stood staring at the Thames in between. What about the locations of the drops, he said. The torso was found on Edgware Road. That was in the early hours of the morning. The labourers wouldn’t have been on site until when, six o’clock?

  Four-thirty, sir, said Blackwell.

  William nodded. That leaves very little time. Whoever did this acted fast. That means they were decisive, did not hesitate. The torso was probably deposited first.

  The head was collected at the docks.

  Which means it was dropped upriver from there. It was collected by a lighter man at work. How long would it take such an item to drift downstream from the bridges?

  It was caught in a mooring cable, sir, said Blackwell. It could have been there for days.

  But Charlotte Reckitt only disappeared the night before. How is that possible?

  Maybe it isn’t Charlotte Reckitt.

  Facts, Shore said. Let us work with the facts, gentlemen.

  What about the state of decay? William asked. Can we tell anything about how long the head was in the water?

  Breck clasped his hands behind his back.

  The three men waited.

  The doctor said nothing.

  Shore cleared his throat. Doctor?

  Breck gave him a slow look with his watery blue gaze. Less than three days, he said reluctantly. Perhaps not even one.

  William turned back to the line on the map. The Thames I can understand, he said. From any bridge the head could be dropped rather easily. But the torso would be heavy and bulky. The legs too. Why would the killer distribute them so far apart? He would have had to carry at least one of the packages some distance from the scene of the killing. Perhaps both. Why go to such trouble? And if he were going to such trouble, why not dump both at the same time, in the same location?

  Edgware Road is a short walk from the end of the Number 11 omnibus route, sir, Blackwell said.

  You’re not suggesting the bastard carried the torso on an omnibus, Inspector?

  At that hour? Would a hansom not make more sense? William said.

  It would certainly draw less attention, Shore said.

  But?

  The chief inspector frowned. But that would mean two things. The driver, first. Somewhere there is a witness to this parcel being picked up—

  William interrupted. Not only picked up.

  What do you mean?

  Not only picked up, he said again. What would have struck the driver as odd would have been the dropping off. A big package like that, at a strange hour of the night, in the middle of a deserted construction site?

  What if it wasn’t obvious? The package might look like construction supplies.

  In the middle of the night?

  Aye, said Shore. And our killer would have risked being seen.

  Blackwell cleared his throat. What if it was a private carriage, sir?

  Shore looked disgusted. A gentleman of sta
nding would never be involved in something like this. I’ve been an inspector fifteen years. I’ve never seen such a thing.

  William shrugged. Where I come from, it’s the more likely.

  We’re not in America.

  So you keep reminding me.

  Shore was shaking his head. What about Southwark Park? Is there any link between there and the building site?

  The omnibus route, sir. The Number 11 changes to the Number 3 during the week. The Number 3 runs into Southwark, sir.

  William regarded Blackwell feeling something almost like admiration. How do you know so much about this, Blackwell?

  My brother, sir. He was a cad in an omni over Blackfriars.

  Are we talking about the same omnibus for each route?

  Blackwell shook his head. Hard to say, sir. On a private route the driver can change over at his leisure.

  Pubs, William said abruptly. If they’re fermenting in their cellars wouldn’t they have access to a horse and waggon?

  Aye.

  So we might have just a delivery waggon being used here then.

  Shore stood and crossed to the window and there folded his ruddy arms. We keep it simple, he said. We know we want a pub with a cellar. It should be somewhere near the Thames. And we suspect we want a pub with a delivery waggon. The cellar should hold coal and firewood.

  What about the omni routes?

  Leave those for now. Start by asking at Edgware and Southwark if any carriages or waggons were noticed in the area around the suspected hours. We’re talking about some rather large and heavy items. It shouldn’t be hard to find a witness noticing something. Dr. Breck, can you have a sketch drawn up of the woman as she must have been in life?

  I can arrange that.

  Shore nodded. Inspector, you take the drawing from pub to pub and make inquiries. Do not reveal that she is dead. Say something else—say we are looking for her on behalf of, I don’t know, a relative. Perhaps an unexpected inheritance. See if anyone recognizes her.

  Yes sir.

  There’s a limited number of places in London that will fit with the good doctor’s findings. We just need to be thorough.

  Blackwell cleared his throat. We might put out a reward, sir, he said. In the interests of being thorough, sir.

  You disapprove, Mr. Pinkerton? Breck asked, his eyes alight.

  William grunted. He had been frowning at Blackwell in distaste. Our agency never posts them, he said slowly. Our operatives never accept them.

  Shore bared the pink of gums in a grin, and there was in it, William thought, something unsavoury. Aye. Your father used to refuse them as a policy.

  And I can tell you why, William said. We had a case in Chicago a few years back, before the telegraph had made much impact. The lakes had just been opened. The city was something of a boom town in those days. My father had given me this case to work. It was the murder of a local bar owner’s wife, found bludgeoned to death outside the locked doors of his residence. They were wealthy, prominent. Some thought it was a political killing. He had evidently been involved in passing an ordinance that affected the hiring of non-local labour, something to do with immigrants and lower wages. Of course the police couldn’t find any motive. I was brought into the investigation late, the evidence was poor, the witnesses already worked over. I didn’t know what else to do. The bar owner insisted on posting a reward. One hundred dollars. The police matched it. I allowed it. I went to the newspapers with the offer.

  And?

  And the killer himself came forward. Turned himself in. He was a vagrant, he’d been out of work for some time, had a wife with a child on the way. But he claimed the reward, and we could see no legal reason not to give it to him. He gave it to his wife to provide for the child.

  The law allowed for it?

  The law allowed for it. I asked him after his sentencing—he was to be hanged before the week was out—why he’d killed the woman. He told me he’d trusted a reward would be posted, if the murder were careful enough. He told me he knew he could not provide for the child. He asked me how much a life was worth, and what was a father’s life worth if he could not keep his baby alive.

  The men were silent. The light shifted in the window.

  I believe, Shore murmured, we are in no danger of that here.

  If you post a reward, John, we both know the public will flood you with tips. Even if you only look into the useful ones, you’ll be busy for weeks following up.

  We might find something of use, sir, Blackwell said to Shore.

  You’ll find something of use by good detective work and careful thinking and a compliant public. Not by wasting your time on gossip and hearsay. William looked at Shore. Let me ask you this. What would Charlotte Reckitt be doing in a pub cellar with her hair cut short? Drugged and tied up?

  You make it sound like she was there by choice, Shore said. Charlotte Reckitt had plenty of bad credit with plenty of flash folk. Not to mention her uncle. We’ll check the flash houses first.

  William clicked his pocket watch open, clicked it shut.

  You should get yourself some rest, William. You don’t look well.

  William rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands.

  I know what I look like, he said.

  It was in 1862 in a ramshackle military hospital outside Antietam that William woke feverish and in pain and saw Margaret at his bedside and understood their life to come. They would be wed after the war and he would not leave her again for the rest of his days. But nor would he live them alongside her. Theirs would be a marriage of leave-takings and returnings, a marriage forged in railroad stations and dusty travelling satchels and late envelopes and unwritten recriminations. He could not be other than he was. He understood his entire life he would seek out death and sidle up next to it and set a powerful hand on its shoulder and pin its arm into the small of its back and he would do this in the Ozarks, in the Black Hills of Dakota, in the warehouses of the New York waterfront, any place he was called on to act, on trains moving at speed through mountain passes and at poker tables on paddlewheelers in the Mississippi and galloping bareback down dirt roads outside New Orleans. He awoke in that military hospital with his left knee swaddled and the pain rising in waves through his body so that he would tense and flinch and ease and tense again for hours on end while the boys around him cried or moaned or lay staring at stumps where two days earlier arms had been and he watched Margaret wend her way down past the other cots and come to him wearing a stained white dress and he felt the luckiest of all those lucky enough to be alive. She had journeyed all night on special trains under a warrant issued by his father and had come to him at that hospital to bring him back from the war. She had just turned fifteen years old and was taller than when he had seen her last and her eyes were no longer the eyes of a girl. Seeing her he understood death would not take him. He already belonged to her.

  He was sixteen years old then and not yet shaving but when he reached for her hand his own hand shook like the hand of an old man.

  He slept out the afternoon deep into evening. Outside the hotel the sprung hansom bowed and rocked as he climbed in, as the wheels jounced into motion. The sheen of sweat on the mare’s hindquarters smouldered in the cold air. At the bottom of Regent Street he stepped down and put on his hat and stared out at the deserted gloom of Waterloo Place. The driver gave him a questioning look but said nothing and then snapped the reins and went on.

  William crossed the vacant square with his gloved hands loose at his sides, his shoes loud on the cobblestones. Made his way past a statue of a robed figure, laurels in its fists like snakes. At its base six gas lamps burned weakly like globes of fruit on twisted iron stems and a man in rags stood in their light, his bare hands on the wheel of an overturned barrow, his bewhiskered face upturned in rapture.

  He found the shop without trouble. It was set back from the square, a dark cobbled lane, bollards blocking the entrance. Gold lettering curlicued onto the glass: Gleeson’s Gunsmithing—Locksmithing�
�Bladesharping—&tc. A weak light burned within.

  He entered decisively and walked past implements and keys, tiny blades shivering on hooks as he went. A smell of oiled metal, wood shavings. In a corona of light behind the counter a figure dipped and straightened over a sharpening box, feet paddling the grinder. It was a boy, fifteen, sixteen. He withdrew a long cleaver from its slot and set it carefully aside and wiped his knuckles on his apron and approached.

  Narrow vicious eyes, pimples in a burst of grease on his forehead. He caught William’s eye and stopped short, out of reach, his left hand in shadow.

  We’re closed, mister, he said. You’d be best back in the morning. Mr. Gleeson’s not in the shop at this hour.

  Albert, he said. He could feel the size of himself there, the shadow he must be.

  The apprentice peered at him, hesitant. Do I know you?

  William lowered his chin so his hat brim would catch the lantern glow and bury his eyes in darkness. He said softly, the menace in it unmistakable: You are acquainted with Mr. Foole, Albert?

  The apprentice cast an uneasy glance into the gloom.

  I have a message. I’ll be passing through Waterloo Place tomorrow night. Ten o’clock. I want him to meet me there. Tell him I’ll do as he asks, but not alone. See that Mr. Foole gets it.

  The apprentice ran a black knuckle under his lip, as if gathering courage. And who do I say it’s from, sir?

  But William had already turned and started back up the aisle, wrestling his gloves on as he went, and he did not bother to reply.

  EIGHTEEN

  Foole went, as instructed.

  A splatter of gaslight on the cobblestones. Shadows clinging to the brick and mortar walls in the gloom. Foole could see nothing in Waterloo Place, no figure, only darkness and the statue like a twist of knuckled stone above its gas lamps. He did not call out. He walked slowly into the open, the chalky scrape of his stick loud on the cobbles, his scarf wrapped tight at his throat. He checked his pocket watch: five minutes to ten. Then came a low huffing of breath at his back, and he turned sharply, and there the man was.

  He had been watching, of course. Thickset, vengeful, he loomed up before Foole in the faint light, the vapoured heat of him rising yellow and eerie from his shoulders and coat. The curve of his top hat’s shadow concealed his eyes. Then he stepped closer and lifted his face and Foole watched the man’s deep-set eyes scan the square.