By Gaslight

by Steven Price

  William let his eye pass across it and then the other bottles ranged behind the bar.

  I’d not lie to ye.

  William glanced at Blackwell, smiled at Shorter. You don’t have anything a little more expensive?

  Ye won’t try this?

  William lifted his eyebrows.

  Shorter’s smile went very tight. We might just could have, he said. It’ll cost ye.

  William reached into his pocket and set a five-pound note on the bar.

  The both of ye has the thirst? Shorter looked at Blackwell and smiled his flushed wide smile. Don’t he have a tongue in his head?

  He likes to do his talking with a glass in front of him, said William.

  The three of them stood in silence for a moment, Blackwell smiling.

  At last Shorter rooted a thumb around in one nostril and sniffed sharply. All right then, he said. Come on an I’ll show it to ye. She takes all kinds, this world, she do. Betts, he shouted. A haggard old woman appeared at the kitchen door. What?

  You watch the front awhile. I’ll be to takin these gents down for a peek at the queer.

  Down to where?

  He gestured with his thumb. Down below.

  Down to where, you say?

  He waved a hand at her, turned away. He had withdrawn from under the counter a greasy lantern and now took it across to the cinder fire and opened its glass door and lit the wick and shut it again carefully. They followed him down through a small passage behind the bar. The stairs were ancient, and made of wood, and rattled dangerously under their weight. Shorter led the way, his huge back and hairy neck blocking their sight. William felt a tension run through him, a kind of electricity, like the feeling in his skin when he would stand in the wheat fields as a boy and watch a lightning storm roll in.

  The cellar stank of damp and sawdust and night soil and William squinted as they came down. The ceiling was low, the rough floor hewn from rock and the lantern glinted and shivered off slime on the walls. Ranged along two walls were rows of barrels and cords of firewood and along a third leaned a shelf of bottles all staggered and askew. William tried to catch Blackwell’s eye but the inspector was following Shorter across to the dusty corner bottles. The floor near the stairs was covered in sawdust from a chopping block but the dust looked strangely deep and evenly distributed and covered the floor some full five feet from the block itself. William drew a crescent in the sawdust with his heel.

  There were bloodstains soaked into the floor.

  What happened here? he said.

  Shorter straightened from where he had been kneeling among the bottles and laughed. Bloody butchers’ strike, he said. He turned back nonchalantly.

  William walked over to the chopping block and lifted up the axe. He could see even in the bad light a faint matting of dried blood and hair. You use an axe for that?

  Now Shorter got to his feet and wiped his free hand on his apron. The other hand with knuckles whitening gripped a bottle by its throat. Sometimes I do, he said.

  I believe we’d like to ask you a few questions, sir, Blackwell said.

  Shorter shook his head. Funny accent for a Canadian, he said.

  Yes, said William. He was still holding the axe.

  Where did you say your wife was, sir?

  Shorter gave the smaller inspector a quick fierce glance but then his eyes settled on William.

  Ye mean to kill me? he said. Whatever he’s to payin ye I’ll double it.

  Put down the bottle, said William.

  We’re not here to harm you, sir. Blackwell took a step forward. I’m Detective Inspector Blackwell, of the Yard. This is my associate.

  The hell ye are.

  Put down the bottle, William said again.

  What’s happened to your wife, sir? Blackwell said quietly.

  Shorter’s face had gone grey and the muscles in his big shoulders were cording and bunching and William thought for an uneasy moment that the man would need to be struck down. But it was not rage but regret which made the man tremble. He stared at the bottle in his hands as if he did not know it and then he set it carefully down on the floor and he stood with his head bowed and his long greasy hair fallen forward.

  Mr. Shorter, sir. Would you like to tell us about it?

  I never meant nothin to happen to her, he said in a whisper.

  I understand, sir.

  It weren’t planned. He looked up. He had started to tremble. She were goin to leave me.

  Yes.

  I caught her at it red-handed, like. I known somethin was wrong and made some excuse to go out for an errand on a Monday night. Then I come back in, quiet. Caught her upstairs in the bar with her bags all packed for Gravesend. She were dressed in a man’s suit and she was a-meanin to rendezvous with some bastard painter. Had cut her hair off an the like.

  What happened, sir?

  Shorter put out a big hand and rested it on the shelf of bottles and the glass rolled and clinked under his weight. I hit her. I never meant it to hurt her. I hit her with a open hand, I swear to god. But her eyes just rolled up in her head and she fell down dead right on the floor. Shorter glanced up at William who stood yet with the axe at his side. I brung her down here and tied her up an poked her a couple a times to see if she were goin to wake up. I thought she might be tryin to trick me, see. She were clever like that. But she were dead. I didn’t know what to do.

  So you cut her into pieces, William said.

  The man’s heavy eyes shut fast and he swayed on his feet but he said nothing.

  What happened to the painter, sir?

  Michael Witten, Shorter said softly. I went looking for the bastard, I did.

  And?

  An I cut his throat while he was sleepin.

  Where is he now?

  Shorter stared glassily at them. Somewheres in the river, he murmured. I’d do it a second time if he was to rise right up out of the grave an walk down them stairs, so help me god I would.

  We’ll need to put some restraints on you, sir, Blackwell said calmly.

  Shorter nodded.

  The inspector took from his pocket the ancient wrist shackles and adjusted their screws and set them on the big man’s wrists and the tavern keeper made no effort to resist.

  William scowled. Except your wife didn’t die from being struck, he said. She was poisoned.

  Poisoned?

  The chloroform.

  The man blinked, turned a heel in the sawdust.

  It wasn’t all quite so accidental and unplanned as you say, was it?

  I loved her, Shorter said.

  Fine way of showing it, William said angrily. He started kicking through the mess of the cellar. There isn’t enough blood here for that kind of cutting up, he said.

  Mr. Shorter, sir? Blackwell said.

  But the tavern keeper was staring down at his shackled hands and said nothing.

  And then William found it. A small locked door under the stairs. He broke it open and found a narrow shaft that once must have held firewood and at the bottom he could see a loose rope and a pair of men’s shoes. The walls of the shaft were black with blood.

  Shorter, William said. He turned back and crossed the cellar and sat on an upturned crate facing the enormous man. Did Ellen confess to her affair?

  He looked up. She never did, he said. She were too mighty clever for that.

  And did Witten confess before he died?

  Shorter’s face twisted. I never give him the chance, he spat.

  But there was no fight in the man and he did not struggle against them. William stamped up out of the cellar and called out a guinea to the first man who returned with a constable and went back down to find Blackwell lighting a pipe for the tavern keeper. The three of them made their heavy way back up the stairs and stood in the kitchen among the grimy pots and the knives and a roasting pig and waited. When a constable arrived William gave Blackwell a long weary look and then went out and he was surprised to hear Blackwell come out behind him. The street was cold, the
air damp. William pulled on his gloves. The door banged shut behind them.

  Let me ask you something, he said. What are the chances of someone else being involved?

  Someone else, sir?

  A confederate. Someone with a motive. Someone linked to the flash.

  In this? Blackwell was studying him with his hooded eyes. I don’t see how, sir. If you mean to suggest the letter from Mr. Witten was false—

  William rubbed at his eyes. Ellen Shorter might just as easily have been running from her husband without any lover being involved.

  And the letter, sir?

  William frowned. There was something in it that troubled him but it might only be the ordinary shabby mystery of any killing. It was a thing he could not get used to. The faded wooden sign creaked on its chains over the doorway. Never mind it, he said reluctantly, and nodded at the young inspector. You did fine work here, Blackwell.

  Blackwell flushed. Thank you, sir.

  But William had already turned away. He was thinking of Shade and other kinds of jealousy and of the strange elusive bond between the thief and his own father. Love is a quiet and quicksilver thing and best left unjudged, Margaret liked to say. He had a sudden memory of her, one elbow propped on the lining of a carriage door, her head cradled in her palm as she peered sidelong at him and smiled. A waft of gardenias. Where had that been? He closed his eyes and rubbed at his temples and knew he had been too long from home.

  Shall I fetch you a cab, sir? Blackwell said.

  He stared at the inspector as if he had forgotten the man’s presence and then he shook his head. No, he said. Thanks. I’ll find my own way.

  And lowered his hat and drew on his gloves and walked back through the narrow stone streets alone, towards the city, a man descending.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Just don’t you ask me to trust her, Molly said at breakfast that first day.

  Running a bitten thumb under red-rimmed eyes, scowling. An egg was gleaming in its shell before her, her spoon ablaze with light like some offering of grace.

  Aye, Fludd grunted later on the stairs. Wrapping his huge hand over the balustrade and lowering his voice. Molly ain’t wrong bout her, Mr. Adam. That sort is like to steal the bleedin shoes off your feet, they is.

  To both he had listened in silence and studied them with hooded eyes and scratched at his whiskers and turned away. For some strange dark fascination had bloomed again in him. He brooded and weighed Charlotte’s intention to free her uncle from the prison transport in Chichester but he could not think his way through it. She had asked for his help and he had wanted to say no but had not. He knew whatever he had shared with her would of course never be again as it was. Meanwhile Fludd knuckled his beard, glowered blackly, and Molly stamped from room to room in displeasure. Charlotte kept apart.

  O-ho, Molly muttered at that. Too good for us is she.

  Fludd lifted an eyebrow, pointedly.

  Foole himself reeled, light-headed. When he knew where Charlotte was he avoided her and when he did not he drifted from room to room, floor to floor, seeking her out. He did not defend her to his companions but neither did he attack her and this reticence was mistaken by Molly for weakness, by Fludd for strength. Foole, unfocused, knew it to be neither. In the afternoon he felt a presence at his back and then her fingers were resting on his neck, on his throat, and he heard her murmur, I forgot how your skin smells. Like river water. But when he turned she was not there. That night as he went upstairs with a candle guttering before him he found her on the landing grey and indistinct, like an apparition, and when he held the flame high he saw she had been crying. He did not breathe. She stepped forward, and took his free hand, and held it to her breast. Her fingers like ice. The hot wax dripping and singeing his other wrist.

  When he tried to kiss her she pulled away, she glared at him inexplicably, she disappeared into the gloom.

  The next day was Monday. Foole and Molly and Fludd sat in the backroom of the Emporium, poring over the dailies, working through the details of their plan. Saturday’s heist had made the front page of most London papers and the public outcry was magnificent. Some blamed the Irish, some the French, an editorial in the London World hinted at George Farquhar’s own involvement. There was speculation as to the painting’s true value and the nation’s claim to the precious artwork. The auction date was postponed. Subscribers wrote letters with advice to the police as to how to trace the painting. Others described suspicious persons seen at the docks, at the train stations. Foole read with impatience, the red drapes drawn thickly over the daylight, the gaslights burning low. Fludd lost interest, picked idly through armfuls of wool batting in an open crate. Then he spat dust from his beard and reached with both hands into the box and withdrew, very carefully, a polished wooden mask. Strands of human hair twisting from its forehead, the scoop of its interior stained dark as if with blood.

  Now this could be useful, he snorted. What do you reckon it is? A disguise?

  The mask leering its twisted leer, dozens of tiny human teeth embedded in circles around the eye sockets. Ancient coins of some Spanish minting knotted and clattering from the jawline. A gruesome thing, a frightening thing, ugly.

  Fludd held it to his face, peered through its slitted sockets. His muffled voice. An how do me face look now?

  Much improved, Molly laughed.

  Fludd pulled it away, looked at Foole. Well? he said. Anything to make us reconsider?

  The exchange? No. Foole rotated his wrist, hearing the joint crack. Farquhar should be encouraged by all of the publicity. It should guarantee him a strong sale in his auction. The letter instructed him that Gabriel would be in contact. He’ll wait for it. We’ll move on Friday.

  Pluckin a picture, Molly muttered. Not so much as a finger on his whole bloody palace full of diamonds, but the picture? Sure.

  Foole held up a hand. Gabriel will write to Farquhar on Thursday with details. Expect the man at eleven o’clock, Billingsgate, as arranged. It will be for you, Molly, to meet with him. You’ll work the open, Japheth and I will work the close. You know him by sight?

  Poncey bugger like him? I don’t expect a challenge.

  An the peelers? Fludd said. Billingsgate Stairs like to be crawlin with them. You don’t trust him to come alone?

  Foole shook his head. He won’t involve the police unduly. I expect some few to be there, for safety. Farquhar is a man of some importance. But he wants his painting, he won’t risk losing it. And constables on the embankment won’t trouble us any.

  Aye. Fludd leaned forward, sawed at his beard with the back of his hand. Because of the river. You engaged the steamers, kid?

  Molly nodded. They’re just waiting on the second payment. She glanced from Foole to Fludd and back again. You sure the peelers won’t be able to follow?

  Unless they swim like fish.

  Well I don’t swim like no fish, Molly said abruptly. I swim like a bloody anchor.

  Best not to fall in the drink then, Fludd grinned.

  Adam—

  You’ll be fine, Molly. There won’t be any complications.

  We can tie a rope to you, Fludd suggested.

  Molly furrowed her brow. An you two? You all set then yourselves, for your part?

  Japheth?

  Aye. There’s a farrier up Albert Courts what rents out his old growler. I’ll see to him in the morning. You finished with your mouldin, Mr. Adam?

  Foole nodded. I will be. There’s one last thing. Mrs. Sykes has procured a second residence for us, in Newington. It seems the owners are out of England for the year. It’ll do fine for us. We’ll need to relocate there at once. Mrs. Sykes and Hettie will close up the Emporium and stay on here.

  Fludd looked at Molly. Because bloody Pinkerton come by here.

  Yes.

  You really reckon he’s such a problem? With The Emma an all? I don’t see how he could know it were us, Mr. Adam. There won’t even be no charges laid, if Farquhar holds true.

  We just need to keep o
ur heads low for a few more days. I don’t mean to invite complications, by allowing William Pinkerton to visit at his leisure.

  An what do you aim to do with her ladyship? Molly said sarcastically.

  Her ladyship.

  Aye.

  By that you mean Charlotte.

  I weren’t talkin bout Jappy.

  You joke, Fludd said. But I make a pretty piece in a girdle.

  Foole was looking at Molly, her eyes small and glinting weirdly in the gaslit sconces. Charlotte is not a part of this, he said softly. We don’t bring her into it. Tell her nothing.

  Molly set her jaw. You mean to leave her here then? she pressed. With Mrs. Sykes?

  Not exactly.

  Fludd was picking at some seam of dirt in his palm, rubbing it out with the ball of one thumb as if to erase his fate. He met Foole’s eye. What Molly’s sayin is, it’s a question of trust. We don’t neither of us suppose it were just coincidence, Pinkerton bein in London, an Charlotte writin you to take on a job. She’s a Reckitt, Mr. Adam. You’d be wise to take that serious, like.

  They all three sat enshrouded in a troubled silence and then Foole rose with his walking stick and opened the door and leaned into the hallway and called loudly for Charlotte. He banged twice on the banister and the sound rattled up through the house. He turned back and left the door standing open. Charlotte has somewhere to get to, he said. I don’t mean Newington. I want you to hear it from her.

  Molly was on her feet.

  Easy kid, Fludd said.

  Charlotte appeared in the doorway, then came in, pausing just inside the door and casting a quick unreadable look at Foole. She clasped her hands before her and her knuckles turned white and she regarded the three of them. What is this? she said.

  Tell them what you told me, Foole said. What you mean to do.

  She did not hesitate. My uncle is in Millbank, she said. I mean to follow his transport when he is moved to Portsmouth, on Wednesday. I mean to help him escape. I’ve asked Adam to help me.

  For a long moment no one spoke.

  That’s a part of it you failed to mention, like, said Fludd slowly.

  It’s a bloody joke, Molly said. Tell us you told her no.

  Charlotte was staring at Foole with a steady dark hopeful eye and Foole looked away, embarrassed. He’s her uncle, Japheth, he said. I don’t expect you to understand.