Freddie was lounging on the cushions, carelessly munching on a large slice of cake, spilling crumbs all around. Susy, on the other hand, had a dark expression on her face: her skin was pale, contrasting starkly against her reddened scars. Besides her troubles – God, it had happened just the day before! – she seemed to anticipate what we were about to announce.
The reality suddenly hit me: those two children had no one. Ellen Terry was now the closest they had to a guardian – if only a guilt-ridden one.
‘What is it?’ Freddie asked from the sofa, bossy and impatient.
Miss Smith took a deep breath and went to the children. Irving tried to take a step forward, but I held him by the shoulder. Ellen Terry, who also knew what was about to be said, was chewing her lips and squeezing her handkerchief so intensely I thought she’d soon tear both cloth and flesh.
McGray pulled up a chair and Miss Smith sat in front of the Harwoods. Her expression was solemn, yet reassuring.
‘Susy, Freddie – I have been looking after your mother. I am sorry to tell you this, but she is very ill. I’m afraid she can’t take care of herself any more.’
That tableau would have made a heartbreaking oil painting. Susy opened her eyes wide; not with surprise, but with the anguish of seeing that the ghastly outcome she’d probably feared for a long time had finally arrived. Freddie, on the other hand, became red with anger.
‘What do you mean?’ he snapped. ‘Where is she now?’
Miss Smith tried to hold his hand but the boy pulled it away. ‘Freddie –’
‘Frederick!’
‘Frederick, we are looking after her.’
‘Where is she? Tell us!’
Miss Smith took another deep breath. ‘Right now we need to care for her at the asylum, but –’
‘So she’s finally gone mad!’ Freddie shouted, jumping on his feet.
‘Freddie!’ cried Miss Terry.
‘You think we’re stupid and don’t notice things, don’t you? You think we couldn’t see her losing her marbles!’
‘Frederick!’ Miss Terry also stood up, furious. ‘How dare you be so cruel! She is your own mother!’
‘And what’s going to happen now?’ Freddie went on, smacking the air about. ‘I’ll have to work like a mule just to pay for the mad woman’s asylum! And to maintain this monstrosity!’ He pointed at his sister and the girl burst into tears, burying her scarred face in her hands. ‘Why do you cry? It’s the truth. You only have one scene and it is as a monster! What else can you play these days?’
Amidst the general gasp, McGray went to Freddie in huge strides, and smacked him so hard it sounded like the crack of a whip.
‘Listen to Miss Terry,’ he hissed, in a tone that made my blood curdle. ‘Have some respect, ye spoiled brat.’
We were all paralysed. Even I, after having witnessed terrible things throughout my career, felt a horrid tingle in my chest.
Freddie was about to touch his cheek, where McGray’s incomplete set of fingers was artistically imprinted, but he contained himself. Instead, he made his way out and slammed the door with a strength seemingly impossible for his flimsy arms.
‘Irving,’ I said, ‘go and make sure he does not do something silly.’
Irving welcomed the excuse and left the room swiftly.
Miss Terry, trembling from head to toe, went to Susy and embraced her tightly. As she ran her fingers through the girl’s hair, it appeared to me that she was trying to console herself more than she was the child.
‘I’ll look after you, my dear,’ she whispered, her voice broken. ‘Don’t you worry about a thing, I’ll look after you.’
And as the two wept, resting their faces on each other, I thought I would have rather heard the deathly cry of a banshee.
39
Decidedly out of spirits, McGray and I sat languidly in the hotel’s smoking room, where the very accommodating headwaiter poured us each a large brandy.
McGray stretched his long legs, crossed his arms and stared at the wide windows. He was not looking at the bright, clean dusk, or at the dark silhouette of Castle Rock, which rose right ahead of us. His eyes were devoid of any expression. Once again I found his attitude strikingly similar to that of his sister, as if both Amy and Adolphus suffered from the same dreadful, paralysing melancholy.
In vain I tried to spur his brains, for there was a mess of facts in my mind which I must untangle. Nine-Nails, however, replied to my speculations only with grunts, which became louder and angrier each time, so I retreated to the safety and coolness of my own notes.
I first noticed that my entries right after the ball had become sparser – no surprise there, with one death and all the mayhem that ensued – and I wondered whether I might have missed an important fact since then. I felt I had, but could not pinpoint what. I read statement after statement, turning back the pages until the very start of my battered little notebook, to the first apparition under Regent Bridge. I had written down the banshee’s words, and I read the four lines a few times.
‘You are not random words,’ I mumbled. ‘There is some dark wit in there …’
I produced my pencil, tore three pieces of paper and wrote down the three messages left by the alleged phantoms. I placed them in front of me, rearranged them, read them in every possible permutation.
‘The death-Macbeth rhyme has to go last,’ McGray said rather unexpectedly. Not out of interest, but frustration at my shuffling. ‘And the other two seem to be in the right order.’
Rather than refute him, I tried to engage him further. ‘What makes you think so?’
He shrugged. ‘Cannae tell. It’s poetry. It just feels that way. And it also matches the order of the events. So far it’s been truthful. The more we plunge our hands into it, the more people get hurt.’
I growled from the bottom of my stomach, ‘I refuse to sit down and do nothing, like a hostage to some silly rhymes!’ When I looked up everyone in the room was casting me baffled looks. I turned to whispers. ‘I have the awful feeling something terrible is about to happen, and that it is all slipping through my fingers!’
McGray nodded at the sonnet. ‘Well, don’t fret so much on those. They’re not giving us the final clue, and that’s on purpose. We cannae tell what’s going to happen.’
‘We should be able to infer it,’ I said stubbornly. ‘We are supposed to be smarter than this.’
I could feel McGray’s acute stare on me, as if challenging me to find the right answer.
‘They do tell us it will happen on the stage,’ I said. ‘We can take things away from them. We can cancel the play.’
McGray chuckled. ‘Irving’s not going to like that.’
‘Irving does not tell us what to do.’
‘Nae, but he’s got Campbell eating from his mucky hand.’
‘I am happy to at least try.’
McGray shifted his weight on the seat, grumbled, and then, very slowly, with the tired look of a father who is humouring a child, he pushed himself up. ‘Fair play, but let’s not waste our time going to Irving. Let’s go directly to Campbell.’ He looked at one of the ornate pendulum clocks. ‘He’ll be having his tea by now. This’ll be fun; I’ve never seen his house.’
I gathered my notes quickly. ‘Please, oh please, do not punch him this time.’
‘Cannae promise, Percy …’
To my complete astonishment, Superintendent Campbell lived in a very modest dwelling in the Old Town, just around the corner from the City Chambers.
His house, one of the oldest on Blair Street, and to my eyes fit only for demolition, looked downright medieval, with a front wall that had bowed after the centuries, and a door that opened directly on to the road, without any garden or porch. No wonder the man was so bitter about his wages.
McGray knocked at his door, but as soon as he lowered his hand we saw a wide, black carriage halt next to our horses. Its roof was folded back, and the long, pale figure of Henry Irving stuck out like a mast.
The man
alighted nimbly, swaddled in his black cape, which the mild evening did not justify. In his gloved hands he carried a bottle that I recognized as some of the most expensive French wine.
‘What the hell are ye doing here?’ McGray demanded, even though we both understood already.
A young maid attended the door and Irving spoke to her, completely ignoring Nine-Nails. ‘Tell your master Henry Irving is here to see him.’
He had hardly finished the sentence when Campbell himself came out, as if he’d been listening behind the door (perhaps he’d seen us through the window, and had instructed his maid to send us away).
‘Mr Irving!’ Campbell cried, with the jolliness of a sixteen-year-old girl called upon by her beau.
‘Good evening, Mr Campbell. What a delight to find you home! I took the liberty to bring you a small token, for you and your fine wife.’
‘Oh, such kindness, sir! Do come in. Frey, Nine-Nails, go away.’
McGray raised an arm between Campbell and Irving. ‘We’ve come to talk about this very man.’
Campbell growled through his teeth. ‘I said, go away!’
Irving smiled contemptuously at us. ‘Come, come, my dear Mr Campbell, I’m sure these gentlemen are just doing their duty. I believe –’
I saw a long speech coming, so I went straight to the point.
‘The play must be cancelled.’
‘What!’ both men yelled in perfect harmony.
Irving cleared his throat and then smiled, but his inner actor struggled to take over.
‘Your staff have an unorthodox sense of humour, Mr Campbell,’ he said. ‘They obviously have no idea of the costs, the effort and the expectations that revolve around my art.’
‘Frey, go away!’
‘I’m surprised ye don’t suspend the play yerself,’ said McGray. ‘Yer manager is in hospital with a broken leg, yer effects expert was shot in the shoulder, yer head seamstress is in the Lunatic Asylum and yer two main child actors are distressed beyond their wits.’
Irving chuckled. ‘My company has pulled through worse, I assure you.’
‘And,’ McGray continued, ‘there’s the prophecy!’
Irving shook his head. ‘I thought you were done with that! Weren’t you two certain that poor Mrs Harwood had done it all?’
‘We have not completely confirmed that –’
‘You have not?’ Campbell interrupted me. ‘Frey, I thought that you, out of all people, would be keen to declare this case closed. Now you are telling me you think those “omens” deserve more investigation? Based on what?’
‘There is a mysterious messenger we still know nothing about, and the blood writings, and the possibility of someone dying tomo–’
‘Oh, these two can be unbelievably tiresome!’ Campbell interjected, making Irving chuckle.
‘You hardly need to tell me that. Mr Campbell, may I take advantage of your hospitality and join you for a cigar – and perhaps a brief word?’
‘Why, I should be delighted!’ he exclaimed, inviting Irving in.
McGray shook his head. ‘Campbell, ye sad, sad piece o’ shite!’
‘Shut up, Nine-Nails!’ Campbell snapped. ‘And get your sorry carcasses away or I’ll have you both arrested for insubordination! Now!’
Irving raised his hands. ‘There, there, Mr Campbell, I hate to see you thus altered. And I’m sure your officers will understand they do need to leave.’
I drew air in, ready to shout on, but McGray seized my shoulder and pulled me back.
‘Come on, Frey. We’ve lost here today. Don’t give him the satisfaction o’ feeding ye prisoners’ porridge.’
The anger burned my insides. I could not believe how the roles had inverted: on a regular day it would have been me begging McGray for equanimity.
As they shut the door on us, I saw Irving’s hand rest on Campbell’s shoulder. He had fine, gentle fingers, but with the power of iron chains.
And he cast us a mordant smile.
40
‘I am surprised you refrained from kicking down Campbell’s door and punching him to a pulp.’
‘Och, why always me? Time ye got yer own hands dirty.’ He patted the bony neck of his borrowed horse as we rode back to New Town, and did not speak again until we passed Princes Street Gardens. ‘For the first time in years I feel like I’m goin’ to have a good night’s sleep.’
The statement puzzled me, but then I realized it was well past eight o’clock in the evening. With the still-bright sky I had not realized the hour.
‘What shall we do now?’ I asked, seeing that McGray was heading to his house in Moray Place.
He shrugged. ‘We’ve done all we can, Frey. We are almost certain Mrs Harwood’s responsible. If that’s the case, she’s in the asylum now. Everyone’s safe. And ye’d be right: it was all a hoax. Not the kind ye were expecting, but still a hoax. We could call our wee bet a draw, if ye get fastidious.’
He sounded exhausted, his face so spent I thought it was a miracle he did not fall from the saddle. And I understood why. The case, which had come to remind him so much of his sister’s misfortune, was clearly taking its toll on him. I could not demand more; I could not expect McGray to be perennially determined and driven. It was already remarkable he’d endured this long without crumbling.
‘Nine-Nails!’ I struggled for the words to explain myself. This must be what he felt like whenever he described his theories of the odd and ghostly to me. ‘Something will happen tomorrow! I am certain! I can feel it in my gut!’
My voice carried across the road, over the carts and horses and the distant echoes of the steam trains. McGray was quite a few yards away already, but I still managed to see the tired smile on his face. ‘I’ve been just as certain of so many things …’ he said, ‘and so far I’ve been mostly wrong.’
Again he looked ahead, but then, just before the famished horse turned around the corner, McGray shouted over his shoulder. ‘Try Madame Katerina if ye really are so desperate!’
‘I cannot believe I am doing this,’ I muttered, ‘I cannot believe it, I cannot …’
The sky had darkened in less than half an hour, blocked with clouds so thick the summer dusk was now as gloomy as my hopeless thoughts.
Philippa was quite restless, as if foreseeing what was to happen that night, but she still took me quickly to the deserted cattle market.
I dismounted carefully, trying not to drop the fine bottle I’d retrieved from my cellar, and after another ‘I cannot believe it’, I knocked at the gypsy’s door. The wood was sticky and stank of stale beer; she’d probably had a very profitable night.
It took her chubby, grubby manservant a good while to open, and when he did so the stench of his sweat made me cough.
‘What d’ye want? We’re closed.’
‘I am friends with one of your mistress’s main patrons. I –’
‘Aye, aye, yer the dandy always running after Nine-Nails McGray.’
‘I do not run after –’
‘Madame Katerina can see ye, but nae for long.’
He bid me in and I climbed the – by now – sadly familiar staircase that led to Katerina’s divination room. I found the woman herself already there, lit by only a solitary candle on the centre of her little round table.
‘I cannot believe this!’ she cried too, her grin as wide as that in the engravings of the Cheshire Cat.
I grimaced at her customary vulgarity, her garish make-up (which, given the late hour, she would probably not wash off before going to bed), her pierced nose and earlobes and eyebrows, her claw-like nails covered in black varnish … and her crude, walloping, impossible to ignore pair of breasts. Thankfully, tonight she’d covered them with the folds of thick dressing robes.
‘Good evening,’ I said, forcing a smile so deeply my face ached.
‘Oh, you brought me a present!’ she added, her green eyes on the bottle. ‘Or is it a down payment for one of my tricks?’
‘May I sit, ma’am? Thank you. This, in
fact, is meant to be uncorked right now. And I do have a few questions I would like you to answer. Without resorting to your – special gifts, if at all possible.’
She chuckled, snapped her fingers, and a moment later the stinky servant brought us a corkscrew and two surprisingly fine glasses. He opened the bottle, poured the wine, and I raised my drink.
‘May we toast to –’
‘Oh, don’t be so coarse, boy,’ Katerina said. ‘Put that thing down and let it breathe.’
I raised both eyebrows. ‘I am all astonishment. I thought you only drank those nasty ales you brew downstairs.’
‘That’s your problem, boy. You think. You assume. You give your senses more credit than they deserve, and then think we’re all idiots for not seeing things through the same glass as you. That’s why I have never liked you.’
‘I cannot say I have ever liked you much, either. Every time I have been coerced into your premises I have thought I’d rather be anointed with honey and set on by a beehive.’
The woman laughed heartily. ‘You have some wit, boy. I grant you that. But if you didn’t work for my Adolphus I’d have sent you home with a few hexes every time.’
‘Ha! The only hex I could catch here are rashes and fleas.’
‘Oh, don’t challenge me, boy!’ she concluded with a wide smile – joking or warning me, I could not possibly tell. ‘Now, let’s try that bottle you brought – to see if at least you have good taste.’
We clinked our glasses and drank; the most unusual toast in my entire life.
Madame Katerina savoured the wine and felt the bouquet like an experienced oenologist.
‘Not bad, but I don’t need to use my inner eye to tell you didn’t bring the best.’
I smiled. ‘Indeed I did not. You could not expect me to waste my finest Cabernet on the likes of you.’
Again, she laughed.
I put my glass down. ‘Now, ma’am, as enjoyable as this has been, I must get to the point, and since we have both been quite sincere so far, I hope we shall remain so.’
‘Ask, boy,’ she said, one chubby finger caressing the rim of the glass.
A Mask of Shadows: Frey & McGray Book 3 (A Case for Frey & McGray) Page 27
