By Gaslight

by Steven Price

  Monday afternoon arrived cold but dry, the London zoological gardens deserted. Foole had sent a runner to Utterson’s offices that morning and received an immediate reply. The solicitor would see him at the gardens at two o’clock. He had descended into Piccadilly for a cab with his hat and walking stick under one arm and Molly trailing sourly behind. Twisting a stubborn shoulder, solitary, quieter than usual. They walked now through the cold gardens, the two of them, a father and his daughter out for a winter stroll. A lonely keeper drifted along the paths disappearing and emerging around the shrubbery. Molly ran her fingers through the low-hanging trees leaving a trail of broken twigs. Foole said nothing. He peered up at the grey sky, glanced at the girl, shivered. The iron stakes lining the pens stood grim and dark as if stained by shadow, the cages desolate and unswept.

  But there was still in the air that earthy fug of animal fear as they passed the hippopotamus pool, emptied now of its water, the walls of its tank splotched and peeling.

  I ain’t stupid, she said suddenly. Don’t look at me like that. You never asked me along to work Utterson into the blind, Edward.

  Stop that, Foole said.

  Stop what.

  Foole put out a hand, slowed her. I’m not Edward Shade, he said, his voice gentling. It’s true I was, once. But that person died in the war.

  That’s a load of bollocking fancy talk an you know it.

  He shook his head. It was a different life, he said. Like what you lived with Mrs. Sharper and her sister. Their birdie. You don’t talk about her. Who you were to them.

  But it ain’t a bloody secret from you neither.

  Foole frowned. To their left the monkey house loomed shuttered and dead. At the elephant park he stopped and leaned his elbows over the railing and looked at the ruins beyond and there was a slick of ice visible in the drained pond.

  Mrs. Sharper, she cut me plenty, Molly said. But you was different, Adam. You didn’t never lie to me. Not from the very first. I never asked you to tell me about your life before, it weren’t mine to ask after. But— She fell quiet.

  What?

  She looked at him. Jappy knows you in ways I don’t. It’s embarrassing.

  Japheth and I go back twenty years. That’s a long time.

  She plugged up her bottom lip, grimaced. I weren’t never birdie, she muttered.

  You were to little Peter.

  She shook her small head, her hair in her eyes. Peter, she said.

  I remember how it was. How you were.

  Don’t you bring Peter into this.

  You’re right. I’m sorry.

  She looked at him. I reckon the war were awful.

  I could live fifty lifetimes and never get far enough from it.

  He raised his eyes and saw a figure at the far side, watching them. The man wore a silk hat and a furlined coat buttoned high and he knew from the shape of him it was Gabriel Utterson.

  Molly, he said.

  But she was already looking across. You should have told me, she said quietly. That’s the point.

  They crunched their slow way around the enclosure, over the frozen grass.

  Your office would have been warmer, Foole called.

  Utterson clapped his gloves, his breath smouldering in the cold. We have a problem, sir, he announced. William Pinkerton came to the house yesterday. A quick displeased sideways glance, his gloves all at once still. I did not speak to him myself, I was occupied at the office. But Rose insists he was rather aggressive. I understand he suggested some impossible relation between you and a certain elusive thief.

  He heard Molly suck in her breath and he looked angrily away. We work our own jobs, Gabriel, you know that. We bring no one in. Who does he mean?

  Of course your business is your own, sir—

  What thief?

  —but I cannot be under scrutiny. I will not permit it.

  What thief, Gabriel?

  Utterson looked at him, his hard green eyes shining. William Pinkerton believes you are, you once were, the notorious Edward Shade.

  Foole started to laugh, stopped. You are joking?

  The solicitor’s expression was blank, unreadable.

  Foole blinked, glared in bafflement at the elephant enclosure beyond. What would give him such a notion? That damned seance?

  Or the manner of your departure perhaps, Utterson said coldly. I did warn you. Sometimes Rose is successful. Sometimes, unfortunately, a sitter will—

  What. Leave in disgust?

  Break the circle. Utterson held out his open gloves, fingers splayed. Rose did not mean to have upset you.

  But she didn’t. It was Ignatius speaking, was it not?

  Utterson’s thin lips were white and crackling in the cold and Foole watched his tongue creep along their edges. We do not select the guide, sir, he said softly. We are conduits only.

  Foole frowned, weighing the truth of his words. The solicitor was all falseness and cruelty but Foole could see no advantage in his betrayal. He felt Molly, tense, beside him. He knew she carried a stiletto in her boot, knew too that he himself could strike Utterson to the pavement with the knuckle of his walking stick before she could even draw. At last he nodded. You and I go back too many years, Gabriel, to play each other false. It would be too easy for either of us to ruin the other.

  The threat hung in the silence between them.

  You asked to meet, Utterson said at last, his distaste sinking back into the folds of his flesh, his face taking on a flushed stillness once more. What is the business?

  Foole took from his pocket a small gilded notebook and flicked through the pages, stopped. There is a man of considerable social standing. He will lose an item of great value to himself soon. Whoever recovers it will need someone to negotiate its return. For a fee, of course.

  Ah. Utterson’s eyes were narrow, lightless. The poor gentleman. I’m pleased to hear it will have a happy ending. But I haven’t accepted such work in over a year, I regret to say.

  It would be for the usual percentage.

  Utterson’s voice was very low. I’m not in the game anymore. I’m sorry.

  Foole stepped forward. I need to get out of London, Gabriel.

  Because of Pinkerton.

  If what you tell me is true.

  Utterson paused, considering. And it would be in my interest for you to absent yourself, he said slowly. It would keep Mr. Pinkerton from my affairs. But you have debts, sir, and Mr. Barr has proven most patient already. Will the job prove so profitable? His shaggy eyebrows lowered as he caught Foole’s expression. Come now, I have heard of your investment loans, do not look so surprised. You must learn to live within your means, sir.

  Foole frowned. This job should fix that.

  It will need to reach completion rather soon, I expect.

  Within the fortnight.

  Utterson gave him a quick sharp look. Haste, sir, is never an ally.

  Not haste, Gabriel. A window of opportunity.

  Ah.

  If you agree, I’ll be in touch with further instructions as I know them. Standard hook and line. After the job’s been executed I’ll require you to reach out to the gentleman yourself, suggest a neutral location to meet. One of us will direct him to you on the day of the exchange, same as always. I expect he won’t press charges.

  Not if he wishes to negotiate, sir. It is illegal to buy back stolen property from declared thieves. You’re certain he will co-operate?

  Well. Foole peered up at the white sky. It’s always easier when they do.

  Just then a keeper came whistling out of the trees rolling a barrow in his arms, the wheel squeaking weirdly. He glanced bored across at them as he went then disappeared towards the monkey house. Utterson took the notebook with George Farquhar’s name and street address and pocketed it and nodded to them both and then he walked swiftly back down one of the deserted paths and was lost to view.

  Foole watched him go. I guess that’s a yes, he said, turning to Molly. Your impression?

  She glared af
ter him. I prefer the sister.

  Me too.

  But I don’t reckon he set you up. Not with Pinkerton, at least.

  Foole nodded, brooding. That’s my sense of it too, he said at last.

  William Pinkerton, Molly muttered. William goddamned Pinkerton.

  She stared out at the grey light in the gardens, the trees wrapped in their heavy wadding to keep out the cold like men turning into their collars. Foole set a hand on her shoulder. He felt her trembling under him like water in a ditch when a carriage rattles past and supposed it must be the cold and he thought again how young she was. Feeling a sudden impossible sadness for the world as it was.

  TWENTY-SIX

  William Pinkerton had been alone with his rifle in a burning canyon in New Mexico when his father fell. That was in June. He did not hear of it until eight days had passed and he had returned to Santa Fe with a man roped and trussed to his own saddle. He threw his satchel over one shoulder and did not wash the desert from his face or hands but rode at once for the railroad station and climbed aboard the first express heading east. All that long journey he stared at the passing fields feeling nothing at all and that nothing he knew would be in him for always.

  The old man had fallen on the sidewalk outside his house and bit through his tongue and septicemia set in. He was dying. When William walked into the front hall out of the evening sun he was wearing a clean shirt and his face was washed but there was a ring of dirt around his collar and wrists and he was carrying his satchel still. He took off his hat in the stillness and stared at the polished furniture in shadow as if he had not seen it before.

  Hello? he called.

  He feared for a long moment that his father had already died. He walked the length of the hall listening to his own footsteps and opened the door to the morning room and crossed to the back porch and stood looking out. His mother was sitting stiffly on the swinging seat there. But when he let the screen door bang behind him she looked up, her face drawn, and he knew it was not yet so.

  Oh, William, she said.

  He stood over her and enfolded her in his arms and he held her like that and when he let her go the chains on the swing creaked. She wore a sun-faded green dress and had pinned her grey hair and she looked to William very old. He saw her glance at the house and then back at him and then she said, Did you just get in? You look hungry. Let me fix you a bite of something.

  He shook his head. He was still holding his hat and he put it down and sat in a wicker chair opposite. How is he?

  A shrug of her shoulder. He comes and goes. Robert’s here.

  From New York?

  She nodded.

  I came as soon as I heard, William said. I haven’t even been home yet. Where are Margaret and the girls?

  They were here this morning. She smiled. They’ve been wonderful.

  William nodded.

  I’d like to see him, he said.

  His father was resting in the second-floor guest bedroom because of the light and when William went in he saw at once that the old man was near death. His throat was thin and corded and his chest sunken and the skin everywhere looked yellow in the evening glow. William would not have known him. He could speak only through one corner of his mouth and the words came distorted and strange. As if he were speaking through a mouthful of cotton.

  Willie, his father said.

  He came to the edge of the bed. How are you feeling, Pa?

  A grimace. Eyes closing.

  I heard you had a fall, William said.

  He saw a thin tear crush out from the corner of one lid and trail down his father’s temple into his thinning hair. He had never seen his father weep. He filled with pity and with something close to shame and he looked away. There was a chair beside the bed and he pulled it out and sat down. Huge and clumsy in it. He did not know what to do with his hands.

  Then his father opened his eyes and stared at him and his eyes were very pale and very clear. Willie, he whispered.

  I’m here.

  I don’t want to die. Don’t let them bury me.

  You’re not going to die.

  His father lay still and prostrate in the bed and a white sheet was across his legs like a funeral shroud and he worked his mouth and he started to tremble. William was looking at him in his frailty and terror and he wet his lips and swallowed but he did not know what to say. He was his father’s son and too much so. The door stood closed behind them as if to keep the softness of the world out. It was a small room and it caught the red sunlight aslant in its windows. The big willow was green on the lawn and he could hear the gardener cutting back the rose bushes under the window. After a time the old man closed his eyes and slept and William sat on in the silence, his big hand on the old man’s wrist, the bones there light as paper.

  It was raining. He got down from the omni and splashed his way through the setts and crossed into Great Scotland Yard, the water seeping through the collar of his coat. Inside the doors of Back Hall he shook out his hat, brushed the beads of water from his arms. The floor was puddled, slick. He made his way downstairs to the freezing records closet. In his pocket he carried the folded telegram from his offices in Chicago. Because Shade had left no trace, no record, no paperwork, William had no legal cause to pursue the man, nothing that would stand in court and not be dismissed as intimidation or harassment. What he needed was a methodical approach. His first task then must be to create a trace of the man. Then he could identify Shade the next time he transgressed.

  For twenty years Shade had haunted the streets, a subterranean figure, not even a suspect in his own crimes. Some grief had divided Shade from William’s father in the war, some betrayal lost now to the grave, if Shore’s account could be trusted. Nearly lost, he corrected himself. There was still one at least who knew the truth of it. If only William could find him, make him confess. For he knew little more now, a month later, than he had known when Foole first approached him in that tunnel under the Thames. His father had wanted Shade held to account, true. But he did not know if his father’s rage was cause enough for him, if it had ever been. There was in him, he knew, some part of his father that he would have better been without. He paused at the records door gripping the handle, scowling at his wet shoes, while two constables stumped past. Helmeted, eyeing him suspiciously. The hell with it, he thought.

  He’d see Shade in shackles yet.

  The records closet was a long narrow windowless room underground. Just within the door stood a cabinet with brooms and mops and a bucket and beside this a small desk and a broken chair which William suspected was used mostly by the groundsman on his night shifts. There were candles in their sconces set at the front and back of the room but they gave very little light. The rest of the room was filled with shelves piled high with papers and boxes and cabinets, all labelled in a faded brown spidery script nearly illegible now and ordered to some system long since abandoned. William had gone in that first day baffled and belligerent until a passing constable had shown him to the small cabinet with the files he was looking for and he returned there now in his search for Fludd. He was crouched on the floor when the door opened and the candles guttered sideways. He glanced up. It was Blackwell.

  Mr. Pinkerton, sir, the inspector called in. I was told I might find you here. Have you a moment, sir? He shut the door, lowered his voice. It’s about the Reckitt murder.

  William stared. He had not given the case much thought since the seance.

  Blackwell shuffled forward, brushing against the loose papers. In his frock coat and silk hat he seemed to cramp the narrow space. You were called in to identify her, sir, were you not?

  Why are you whispering?

  Whispering, sir?

  Speak up, man. Yes, I saw her.

  Blackwell cleared his throat. And were you certain about it, sir? The identification?

  What is this about, Blackwell?

  The inspector frowned, uneasy. Is it possible, sir, that a mistake was made? Is it possible the dead girl is not Charlo
tte Reckitt?

  William thought of the woman he had mistaken for Charlotte in the street several weeks past, his frantic pursuit of her through the alleys, all at once interested despite himself.

  It’s just that I might have found a lead, sir. From the drawing, sir.

  Go on.

  A publican’s wife. She disappeared shortly before the body was found. Two separate men identified the drawing as bearing a resemblance. And the pub in question fits Dr. Breck’s criteria, sir.

  What does the husband say?

  I haven’t approached him yet, sir.

  William smoothed his moustache. You know it’s likely nothing.

  Yes sir.

  It’s probably a mistake. You know that.

  I do, sir.

  Does John know?

  The chief? Blackwell blinked. I haven’t written to Brighton, sir, if that’s your meaning.

  Brighton?

  The chief’s in Brighton, sir. Did you not know?

  What’s he doing in Brighton? Holidaying?

  In February, sir? Blackwell smiled stiffly as if William had made some witticism. I should think not, sir. He raised a hand to his collar but his elbow caught on a leaning stack of reports and he bent swiftly, caught and righted them. Mr. Shore isn’t due back until day after next. But I wouldn’t wish to waste his time, sir, if it is indeed a mistake. I have a tenement I’d like to make some inquiries at first, which she’s said to have frequented. Blackwell eyed the leaning stack of reports warily then raised his face. What is it you’re looking for here, sir? Might I be of assistance?

  William waved a hand as if it were nothing. Did you want me to talk to him?

  Mr. Shore?

  The husband.

  Ah. Blackwell nodded in relief. Well, sir. I should hate to go alone.

  William gave the inspector a firm look. You just let me know when, he said. And then he started to turn back to his task. But Blackwell did not move and only stood peering at William in his damp clothes and William blew out his cheeks. Was there something else?

  The body, sir. To be clear: you were certain when you identified it?

  I thought I was. John recognized her too. And there was a neighbour brought down from Hampstead who confirmed her as well, if I remember it right. William’s legs were cramping and he got now to his feet, sore, feeling his age. If it’s not Charlotte Reckitt in those jars—