A Mask of Shadows: Frey & McGray Book 3 (A Case for Frey & McGray)

by Oscar de Muriel

  I had to push those theories back, for there was something far more immediate I could infer from his writings: Stoker had returned to his chambers. He’d ventured into the dingy alleys, ‘following’ whatever he’d thought was calling him, but then he’d come back and written it all down. He had disappeared after doing so.

  There were no signs of violence in the room, so it was likely Stoker had left of his own accord, whether willingly or tricked into it. Unless, of course, he’d been attacked so swiftly and unexpectedly he’d had no chance to defend himself.

  As I gathered the sheets with my notes, a sweat-covered Sergeant Millar burst into the room.

  ‘Sir!’ he screeched, ‘we know who took the gun.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That mad seamstress. Mrs Harwood.’

  ‘I thought someone was guarding that corridor,’ I said as we walked briskly towards the main entrance.

  ‘We were running out of men,’ said Millar. ‘Inspector McGray wanted more officers out there looking for the Irishman.’

  ‘And who saw her?’

  Right then we entered the lobby. There was quite a commotion.

  ‘She did,’ and Millar pointed at Miss Ivor – Hecate – who was prostrated on a chair, all colour gone from her face, and grasping a cup of tea one of the chambermaids had just offered her. ‘This lady says it all happened about ten minutes ago.’

  I leaned closer to her. ‘Miss Ivor, pray, what did you see?’

  The poor woman looked up, her lips and hands trembling, the tea beginning to spill.

  ‘Mrs Harwood was in the hall,’ she said, but barely managed to utter the words.

  ‘And she had the gun?’ She only replied with a nod. I had to rest a hand on her shoulder to try to calm her down. I wished McGray was around; he is very good at managing distressed witnesses. ‘Where is she now? Where did she go?’

  The maid encouraged Miss Ivor to have a sip of tea. Miss Ivor gulped painfully but the drink seemed to help.

  ‘I tried to reason with her,’ she said, ‘but she looked so frightening with that gun; she was caressing it with mad eyes. I asked her where she’d got it from and she barked at me. Said it wasn’t my business. She said we should have told her about …’ Miss Ivor clutched a hand at her chest. ‘Well, about the little girl’s trouble.’

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ I hissed. ‘Who ever told her?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Miss Ivor, ‘but it made her lose her wits! She said she was looking for Mr Wheatstone.’

  There was a general gasp at those words, and I realized we were surrounded by half the cast of Macbeth. The three witches, Banquo, Macduff … I could not see Freddie or the assassins though.

  ‘Is he at the hotel?’ I asked them.

  Mr Haviland – King Duncan – stepped forwards. ‘No, he cannot be. I saw him this morning at breakfast. He was leaving for the theatre.’

  ‘I saw Mrs Harwood run down the corridor,’ said Miss Ivor. ‘It looked like she was heading to the kitchens –’

  I immediately ran there, Millar and another officer following me. We found the now familiar kitchen in even greater turmoil than the lobby. The head cook, a rather overweight individual, was sitting on the floor, and the scullery maids were fanning her with rags.

  The cook, whom I’d questioned myself the night before, recognized me at once.

  ‘Crazy lady!’ she cried. ‘With a gun!’

  ‘Did she go into the street?’ I urged, and the chubby woman assented, pointing at the door that led to the pantry and on to the backyard.

  ‘She must be going to the theatre,’ I told Millar. ‘We must get there before her.’

  I had Philippa fetched at once, and as I mounted I saw an enormous canvas being unloaded from a wide carriage. A small crowd had gathered as some workers took it into the hotel, and before darting east I caught a glimpse of the unfinished, larger than life, full-length portrait of Ellen Terry in her beetle dress.

  What a frantic race it was! I took Philippa straight into Princes Street Gardens, scarcely believing I had chased the now-dead Dyer across those very lawns a few hours earlier.

  We passed the gardens’ sumptuous fountain. Then the gravel of the railway crackled under my mare’s hooves as we galloped across it, and we circled Castle Rock so swiftly I feared Philippa would fall on her side.

  Millar’s horse, a dark and mangy beast, very soon lagged behind.

  I groaned out loud. I would have to face Mrs Harwood alone.

  As I galloped I thought the matter through: if she had gone on foot I would reach the theatre much sooner – and I’d be waiting for her. If only things could be so easy.

  I ascended the lawns on the south-west side of Castle Rock and rushed through the garden’s wrought-iron gates, then cut the path along the narrow Cornwall Street, which led directly to the corner where the Lyceum Theatre stood. I felt an immense relief when I saw its blindingly white façade emerge, but the respite would not last.

  The first thing I saw upon rounding the corner was a cart loaded with jute sacks, being unloaded by three men: two young workers and – I gasped when I recognized him – Mr Wheatstone himself.

  ‘Get inside!’ I hollered, well before I reached them. Wheatstone, loaded with a sack on his shoulder, looked at me with incomprehension.

  Behind him a cab had just stopped. I would not have noticed it had it not halted so violently, and before its wheels went still – my quarry jumped down.

  My heart skipped a beat then.

  I cannot believe the striking detail that has been imprinted in my mind: the pattern on her white dress, the slight trip of her first step on the pavement, the little blue purse she clenched, but more than anything else, the feral expression on her face. She opened her mouth as if to roar, but not a sound came out.

  ‘Behind you!’ I yelled as I dismounted.

  Mr Wheatstone did turn, and as soon as he saw the woman his legs trembled and he dropped the sack. The jute burst on the pavement and a thick cloud of white lycopodium powder engulfed the scene.

  As I ran to them I saw Mrs Harwood open her purse and pull out the little gun, its ivory glimmering in the sun despite the explosive dust suspended in the air.

  ‘It’s all your fault!’ Her voice caught all eyes on the street, people screaming at the sight of the weapon. She was pointing it directly at Mr Wheatstone’s chest, the barrel but a yard from him.

  I leaped forward, stretched my arms desperately, and at the precise instant my fingertips brushed her lace-trimmed sleeve, a bullet was fired. The detonation resounded across the road, the cloud of powder ignited instantly, and the world became hell itself.

  35

  I felt the flames on my hand and the heat burning my eyes. I instinctively covered my face and jumped back as I heard the piercing, anguished shouts of Harwood and Wheatstone.

  The ball of fire ascended like an eruption and dissipated in seconds – only the floating powder had burned, not that in the sacks piled up all around; not even the white heaps scattered on the floor – but Mrs Harwood’s sleeve was ablaze and she yelled madly, jerking her arm uncontrollably. She had dropped the gun. I seized her and had to smother the flames with my bare hands, which already felt scorched. As soon as the immediate danger had passed she began writhing and trying to pull herself free.

  I tried to control her, and as we struggled I saw Mr Wheatstone.

  The man lay on the pavement, his clothes singed and a splatter of blood on the side of his grey beard. The two younger workers had knelt by his side.

  ‘Wounded badly?’ I managed to say, still struggling.

  ‘Shoulder!’

  Mr Wheatstone himself spoke, and pressed his blood-soaked hand on the injury. I had managed to push Mrs Harwood’s arm just enough to save the man’s heart.

  ‘Take him to Chalmers Hospital,’ I told the men. ‘That’s the nearest.’

  ‘Where’s that, boss?’ asked the cockney worker. ‘I don’t know the city very –’

  ‘Just sout
h from the Cattle Market. Do you know that?’

  ‘Oh yes, that we know.’

  They helped Mr Wheatstone rise, and then climb on to the same cart they’d been unloading. Just as they did so I finally managed to twist Mrs Harwood’s arms and hold them firmly against her back.

  ‘He burned my child!’ she howled when she knew herself subdued, and she became a dreadful thing to behold. Her eyes burst into tears, her voice was an unbearable wail and people on the street were covering their ears. ‘You demon! If there was any justice you would’ve burned right now!’

  Despite her fits I felt her misery, just as much as I felt the guilt on Mr Wheatstone’s face. He was a wretch as the cart took him away, wincing from both pain and remorse.

  I dragged Mrs Harwood to the cab. The driver had initially stayed there waiting to be paid, but now he was petrified.

  ‘I’ve nothing to do with this!’ he cried when I approached. ‘I just carry passengers! I never thought she’d –’

  ‘Shut up! Take us to Morningside. Now!’

  Right then I saw Millar arrive on his sweating horse, and a street peeler had come running upon hearing the gunshot. At least I would not have to escort Mrs Harwood to the asylum on my own. As it transpired, I would not go at all.

  With Stoker still lost, the situation was now nearly out of hand, so I decided Millar and the other officer were perfectly able to take Mrs Harwood to the caring hands of Cassandra Smith at Morningside. In the meantime I rushed back to the Palace Hotel, where I’d left Stoker’s journal and all my notes, determined to question Miss Terry once and for all. However, when I stepped into the lobby I found Nine-Nails.

  I could tell he’d spent all night looking for Stoker: he was still wearing the borrowed black suit, but it was so creased and muddied it could have belonged to him for years. Arms crossed and looking as alert as if he’d slept for seven hours, McGray was questioning the hotel manager, Mr Clarke, who looked as if he were about to pass a kidney stone.

  McGray saw me out of the corner of his eye. ‘Where the hell were ye? I’ve been looking for ye everywhere.’

  ‘We had a little bit of a situation here,’ I grunted.

  ‘Aye, just heard it all from this one.’ He nodded at the manager. ‘Did ye find Mrs Harwood?’

  I told him everything in five sentences, seeing the concern grow on his face.

  ‘Jesus, Frey! I cannae leave ye on yer own without everything blowing to smithereens! And ye sent poor Wheatstone to Chalmers Hospital! Everybody kens that place is a shite hole.’

  ‘Excuse me, it was an emerg–’

  ‘There, there, ye did well. But if Wheatstone needs stitches his shoulder’s gonna look like a sock darned by a blind donkey.’ McGray’s tone suddenly shifted. ‘Frey, something happened on my side too. That’s why I was looking for ye. And Irving.’

  ‘What was it?’

  McGray cleared his throat. ‘We just found Stoker.’

  36

  Was he dead? Was he alive? In what state had he been found? I asked those and many more questions in a single breath, but before McGray managed to answer, Henry Irving came to us.

  The man had not slept either, sporting dark rings under his eyes and very little colour on the rest of his face. With the black jacket and tie he was wearing, as if assuming he’d be mourning someone soon, Irving looked like a spectre.

  ‘Well?’ he spat. ‘They told me you had news.’

  McGray took his time to reply. ‘Aye, we found yer man. Alive.’

  Irving’s chest went down in the most relieved exhalation, a bony hand drawn instantly to his heart. For a moment his stare lost all its arrogance and I caught another glimpse of the real, almost fragile man we’d seen last night. He would not let that impression last; Irving blinked and any trace of compassion was gone.

  ‘Is he well?’ he demanded. ‘Where did you find him?’

  McGray sneered. ‘He’s quite shaken, Mr Irving. Broken leg, michty blow on his head and bruises all over his arms and legs. We found him lying under some bushes in Queen Street Gardens. Unconscious.’

  ‘My dear Lord …’ Irving muttered after a gasp. ‘Where have you taken him? I must see him.’

  McGray had had to borrow the only mount available at the City Chambers: a flea-ridden nag with patches of mange, which looked even more pitiful next to my snow-white Philippa. Irving followed us in a black carriage, and very soon we reached Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary.

  Everything on that street was either grey or lacklustre: the cobbled road, the buildings’ stones and the wrought-iron fence surrounding the hospital. And my mood was just as gloomy: during the ride I’d begun to feel utterly spent, as if my mind and body had suddenly become aware of the dreadful happenings of that morning.

  My right hand was growing blisters from the fire, and I could barely handle the reins. I should ask a nurse to bandage me whilst we were here.

  We must have been the oddest trio to enter that hospital: three very tall men, each as different from the others as the imagination could conceive. A nurse guided us to a small waiting room, telling us the doctor was still with Stoker, but that we’d be able to talk to him in a few minutes. It would have been awkward in the extreme to sit there with Irving, and he must have thought just that, for he went back to the corridor to pace.

  The same nurse kindly applied an unguent and bandaged my burns, and when she left I seized the chance to talk to McGray in private.

  ‘Why did you not tell me about all the nonsense Stoker confided to you?’

  McGray looked downright puzzled. ‘What?’

  ‘The black hound, his cursed ancestry and all that gibberish he believes.’

  ‘Who told ye that?’

  I pulled the journal from my side pocket, my notes now crumpled around it, and handed the lot to Nine-Nails. ‘I found this in his room. He wrote everything down. Everything about –’

  ‘Notes by I. P. Frey,’ he read. ‘I didnae ken ye had a middle name. What is it?’

  ‘That is not important now. What does matter –’

  ‘Is it Petunia?’

  ‘McGray!’

  ‘Is it Peaches?’

  I brought a hand to my exasperated face. There was no way he would let it go. ‘Very well. It is Percival, could you now –’

  ‘Och, yer a Percy! This is priceless!’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘Could you please bloody focus?’

  ‘Aye. Sorry, Percy.’

  I grunted, though thinking that Percy was still better than Nine-Nails’ original nickname for me.

  ‘How could you not tell me about his ancestry?’ I snapped as he looked through my notes.

  ‘What for? Ye would’ve mocked him and me, and given us one o’ those shite-sniffing faces o’ yers.’

  ‘I do not know if I would have –’

  ‘Percy … ye would’ve. Yer doing it now!’

  ‘Very well, I definitely would have. But had I known he is a direct descendant from Irish chieftains I would have looked at him under an entirely different light. I could tell he believed in all that superstitious Irish folklore, but I never imagined how obsessed he really is. I just went through his belongings; he is as mad as you! He has the knowledge and skills and resources to piece together all this banshee nonsense.’

  McGray arched an eyebrow. ‘Him behind the banshee sightings? Ye’ve nae seen him yet. The man was battered quite badly. He wouldnae’ve done that to himself.’

  I opened the journal at one of the blotted pages. ‘Look at the intentionally masked passages. Then these missing pages. It is as though Stoker was censoring himself. Why do that?’

  McGray looked at the sections in question and pondered.

  ‘He must have seen the banshee.’

  I closed my eyes in exasperation, just as a middle-aged doctor came to us. After McGray introduced me as ‘Inspector Percy Frey’, the doctor told us that Stoker had regained consciousness, but the pain in his leg had been unbearable.

  ‘I gave him some laudan
um,’ the man said, ‘but I might have overdosed him.’

  ‘Overdosed him!’ I was incandescent.

  ‘I gave him twenty drops, given his size, but it did nothing, so I gave him another five. Which sent him to the clouds.’

  I drew a hand to my frustrated face. ‘How long did you wait between doses?’

  The doctor just bit his upper lip. ‘Erm …’

  ‘Oh, never mind. Take us to him.’

  He led us to Stoker’s room and we saw that Irving was already there.

  On the bed beside the window lay Bram Stoker, his face flushed and breathing heavily as though in a stupor. And by his side stood the tall, thin Irving, clad in black and leaning over the bed. His spine was curved in a way that made him look like a vulture watching over a dying animal. With his left hand he held both of Stoker’s, as he spoke softly.

  ‘I am so relieved, Bram. So relieved!’

  Stoker smiled. It was a tired, yet comforted gesture.

  ‘The doctor says you’ll be fine,’ Irving went on. ‘Do your best. I need you tomorrow at the premiere.’ He leaned a little closer. ‘And if you recover promptly we might have time to go for a nice Angus steak before we leave Scotland.’

  Amidst the drug-induced euphoria, there was a pathetic spark in Stoker’s eyes – that of a little boy who is promised toffee if he behaves – and I felt deeply sorry for him.

  ‘I’ll try,’ Stoker mumbled, his voice slurred as if he were terribly drunk.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Mr Irving, we need to have a few words with Mr Stoker.’

  Irving rose to his full height, pushing back his shoulders and casting me the most disdainful stare. ‘Have them, then.’

  ‘In private,’ I added, but Irving stood his ground.

  McGray intervened. ‘Get out! Or I’ll pound ye ’til the winter o’ yer bloody discontent!’

  Irving had to oblige. The doctor, wisely, had already left the room, so I shut the door.