The Bedlam Detective

by Stephen Gallagher

  “Did we, now,” the driver replied without emotion. In his cap and goggles, facing forward in a scarf wound tight against the oncoming weather, he had the advantage over Sebastian, whose face was up against the little window with his eyes already beginning to stream in the rush of air.

  Sebastian said, “I believe the fault is mine. It’s easy to mistake loyalty for obstinacy. How long have you worked for Sir Owain?”

  The driver took a while to respond. And then all that he said was, “Long enough.”

  “He said those girls were torn by beasts. What do you think?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” the driver said. “I didn’t see them. I stayed outside with the car.” He glanced at Sebastian. “I take it they were bad.”

  “Torn by beasts or not. Someone meant to spoil them.”

  They passed over the bridge across the railway line. The estuary was behind them now. Beyond the station stood a hill dense with trees.

  Sebastian said, “What’s your name, driver?”

  “Thomas Arnot, sir.”

  “Forgive me for the way I spoke to you before.”

  This belated touch of civility, along with mention of the suffering of the victims, seemed to temper the driver’s attitude.

  The man said, “If you want to talk about beasts, go to the post office and ask them to show you the book.”

  “The what?”

  “The book where all the holiday people write down their stories of what they see on the moor.”

  “Are you joshing me?”

  “No, sir, I am not. And I’m not claiming there’s any truth in any of it, neither. I’ve never seen any such thing myself. But there’s been many a sighting over the years. For all I know, there could be something in it. Some animal escaped from somewhere, going back to the wild. Strange things brought home from faraway places. It’s not always peacocks and monkeys.”

  Sebastian was inclined to dismiss it. He’d seen the results of animal attacks. But before he could say so, the driver suddenly said, “Is that why we’re going to the fairground? To see if anything’s escaped from their menagerie?”

  And his manner was so changed, now that he saw himself included in the thinking behind the plan, that Sebastian chose not to contradict him.

  “Something like that,” he said.

  Then he closed the dividing window and sank back into the leather seat, steadying his mind for the drive ahead.

  Evangeline was passing the upturned boats by the estuary. Out in the sand and the mud, a solitary rotted wooden post stood firm, worn down to a stump of two or three feet. A tangle of old ropes and knots festooned it like a merman’s necklace. Even farther out, rising from the water, was a dune topped with a memorial cross. A chapel had stood there once, she’d been told, until floods and the shifting river had cut it off from the town.

  There was another mile to go. She’d have to keep an eye on the time, or risk returning across the moor as night fell.

  In the days following their misadventure, the newspapers had reported that she and Grace had been found safe and well the next morning, none the worse for their outdoor ordeal. But many details had been suppressed in the retelling. All that Evangeline knew was that she and Grace had actually been found terrified and shivering, with most of the clothes ripped from them. And this was knowledge that she’d gleaned from the questions she’d been asked; she had no direct memory of it herself. Her closest memory was of lying in her bed while adults talked downstairs.

  It was a rough ride down the last of the track, and for the final hundred yards Evangeline had to dismount and walk the bicycle. There ahead of her was the old familiar cottage, with the paddocks and the great wide bay beyond. It had been dilapidated then, and it was dilapidated now. Any more dilapidated, and it would be derelict.

  “Grace?” she called from the gateway, but there was no reply.

  She left her bicycle leaning against one of the outbuildings. The front wall of the wooden stable was a rusty maze of bolts and hinges and iron catches. She walked around it and found Grace in the paddock behind the house, tending to one of her horses.

  She hadn’t heard Evangeline coming. Evangeline called out, “Are you well, Grace Eccles?” and Grace quickly looked toward her.

  There was a moment in which Evangeline was uncertain of the reception she’d get. But it was quickly over.

  “Better than some,” Grace replied, turning to face Evangeline as she crossed the paddock. Grace looked as dark and as wild as ever. “What are you doing here?”

  “Just a brief visit to see some old faces.”

  “And rattle some old bones?”

  Instead of replying, Evangeline looked at the animal in the halter that Grace was holding. She’d been stroking its head and speaking soothing things into its ear. There was something odd in the way he held his head to listen, but Evangeline couldn’t have said why.

  “What’s wrong with him?” she said.

  “He kicked up and threw his owner. So his owner pulled his head around and had an eye out with his thumb. Who could do that to an animal?”

  “That’s appalling. Though I could imagine wanting to do it to some people.”

  Grace removed the halter. The horse didn’t move until she gave him a push, and then he trotted off.

  Evangeline said, “I don’t know how you can keep a farm going on your own.”

  Grace shrugged, as if there were no choice involved. She said, “I can’t sew and I can’t sing. And they don’t welcome riffraff like me in the kind of places you go.”

  It was said without resentment. They started to walk back toward the house.

  Grace’s father had bred horses. Grace herself did not. It was 1912, and the market for working animals was beginning to disappear. Tractors and buses and trucks were replacing more of them every year. With no capital to speak of, Grace scraped her living by taking in distressed city horses, nursing them back to health, and selling them on.

  Evangeline looked out toward the estuary. The half-blinded horse had joined four others grazing down there, right up against the fence. With the sun going down, this felt like the sweetest, most isolated spot on Earth.

  She said, “Does anyone ever come out here?”

  “An earful usually sends them away. They don’t expect it from a woman.”

  Grace had never been at a loss for a riposte. Evangeline could remember their school and the teacher who’d once said, when Grace had been scowling about something, “Now, Grace, what’s that face for?” And Grace had replied, “It keeps all the meat from falling off my head, Miss.” The entire class had laughed, and Grace had been sent to stand alone out in the yard for all of a cold March morning. Evangeline was the only one who could see her through the window, and the teacher would ask her every few minutes for a report.

  “Just standing there, Miss,” she would say.

  And indeed, Grace had just stood there; unbeaten, unbowed, until finally she was recalled. Whereupon she returned to her desk without any sign of self-pity or contrition.

  They walked back up to the buildings. After she’d hung the animal’s halter up on a peg outside the stables, Grace said, “Come inside. We can have a glass of water.”

  So then they moved from the stables toward the house.

  Grace went on, “I know the real reason why you came back.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes, I do. Can’t you let it go? You’d do better to.”

  “You’re sounding like my mother.”

  “Your mother’s ashamed for you. Doesn’t want people to think you’ve been tainted. She thinks you should feel the same way.”

  “Do you?”

  “I used to.”

  “Don’t you think about it?”

  “I’ve been through worse since,” Grace Eccles said, and they went inside.

  Evangeline understood what Grace surely meant. Grace had nursed her father through his final months, right here in this house. They couldn’t afford doctors, and there was little tha
t a doctor could have done; it was the drink that had killed him, and his final weeks had been a harrowing time of jaundice and delirium.

  The house was mean, but Grace kept it neat. Fresh rushes on the floor, meadow flowers in a small cracked vase on the sideboard. Evangeline was surprised to notice some books, but she didn’t comment. She couldn’t recall seeing a book in the Eccles house while Grace’s father had lived.

  Grace had water in a jug, kept cold on a stone. Alongside it were two fine glasses, polished.

  Grace poured out two careful measures and handed a glass to Evangeline.

  “Taste that,” she said. “It’s so clean.”

  Politely, Evangeline drank; Grace sipped at hers, and closed her eyes to appreciate it. She kept them closed for a while, long enough for Evangeline to drink again and wonder if she was missing something.

  Then Grace said, “Did anyone tell you they’re trying to get me off the land?”

  “I thought Sir Owain made you a promise.”

  “It’s not him. It’s that doctor who lives in his house. Tells him when to eat, tells him when to sleep, tells him when to fart and make water.”

  “Grace!” Evangeline pretended to be shocked, and Grace to shrug it off. She’d always liked to play the outrageous child. Because her father was said to have been a settled gypsy they’d called Grace a diddikai, and she’d turned the insult into a badge of pride.

  From her father she’d inherited his touch with horses and this cottage, and the dispute that came along with it. He hadn’t owned the land, but he’d laid out hard cash for a lease that still had thirty years to run. He’d counted the money out before witnesses and made his illiterate’s mark on a deed. When he’d died, there had been some immediate question as to whether it should revert to the estate or pass on to his heir.

  Grace said, “Sir Owain was always as mad as a coot, but now he’s getting worse. A man came out from London. Went over to the Hall asking questions, trying to get him locked up. It’s supposed to be a big secret but everyone knows about it. Old Arthur told me.” She smiled with some satisfaction. “The London man came to the house. I sent him off, too.”

  “What did he want with you?”

  “Didn’t give him a chance to say.” They pulled out chairs to sit at the cottage’s plain board table. It was heaped with brasses and bridles and a mass of other tack that Grace was attempting to clean up or repair. She had to clear a space for them to put the glassware down.

  She went on, “That doctor friend of his keeps saying that my piece of paper means nothing now Father’s gone. Says the estate has to be run properly or Sir Owain will lose it. He wants me paying rent or he wants me out. Well, he can want. There’s worse than him to watch out for.”

  “Like who?”

  “If anything ever happens to me, I daresay you’ll know where to look to find out.”

  Evangeline looked at her. Lost, unhappy Grace. With her wind-scrubbed skin and her dirty fingernails. Evangeline felt a lurching reminder of the sisterly love she’d once had for her. Motherless Grace and fatherless Evangeline. At one time it had been as if they could read each other’s thoughts. But now Evangeline looked and found the book closed, its pages blank, its text encrypted and hidden from her view.

  Grace said, “Go back, Evangeline. Go back to London. The last thing you want is to find what you’re looking for.”

  “I wish I could remember, Grace,” Evangeline said simply.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Won’t you help me?”

  “Nothing I can do.”

  Grace walked her as far as the gate, where Evangeline said, “Those two dead children. They could have been you and me.”

  “Sir Owain says they were torn by beasts,” Grace said. “I don’t think he’s far wrong.”

  Evangeline gave it one last try. “What do you know, Grace?” she said.

  “No more than you,” Grace said.

  Again, Evangeline had to wheel the bicycle over rough ground to the main track. Grace did not stay to wave her off. She felt a hollow space inside her for the friend she once thought she’d keep forever, but must now acknowledge that she’d lost.

  So Sebastian Becker was actually the Lunacy Visitor’s man and had his sights set on Sir Owain? That was a detail that he and Stephen Reed had chosen not to share.

  Instead of pointing the bicycle toward Arnmouth village and home, she turned it toward Sir Owain and the Hall.

  SEVENTEEN

  The Fairgrounds came into sight, occupying three fields on the outskirts of a small market town. It was almost evening now, and the lanes all around were dense with people making their way to the entertainment. The car had to slow to nose through them; the crowd treated the Daimler as part of the day’s spectacle, a piece of road jewelry as exotic as any sight they’d come to see.

  First came the noise. Not one Marenghi organ, but a dozen, each one cranked up to drown out its neighbor. Heard at this distance, their tunes varied as the wind changed.

  There was a gateway of painted scenery and electric bulbs that turned the entrance of a common field into a portal of wonders. Beyond it, a bazaar of light and noise. The fair was a portable city of tents and boards, of wooden towers and brilliantly decorated show fronts. Among the temporary buildings stood mighty engines like Babylonian elephants, all crashing pistons and blowing steam, powering the rides with their belts and dynamos.

  The car didn’t enter the grounds, but was waved on to a field above them where provision had been made for motor vehicles and wagons. It was grazing land, unplowed, and the ground was poor. Sebastian had to clutch at a hanging strap as the Daimler bumped over ruts to find a level spot in the grass.

  When they came to a stop, Thomas Arnot turned off the engine and the two men climbed out.

  The entire site could be observed from here. Looking down on the contained land of people, planks, and canvas, the driver said, “I don’t see any menagerie.”

  “There’s horses,” Sebastian said.

  “You get horses anywhere.”

  He took the camera and left the driver standing guard on the Daimler, observing the show field from its running board. Some boys were trying to get Arnot’s attention, probably to ask if they could climb up and have a sit behind the wheel, but he was ignoring them.

  Down in the field, Sebastian quickly found what he was looking for. Bordering one side of the fairground was an entire row of attractions, each with a walk-up platform and a show front. Each had a barker and some had demure dancing girls, in full white skirts and ankle socks. The barkers were playing hard to the crowds, but it was still early and the crowds were sparse.

  The show fronts were decorated to an astonishing standard, every one a rococo basilica of gilt and paint and gingerbread. The grandest of them all was the Electric Coliseum, a veritable cathedral face built around an eighty-seven-key Gavioli organ. Little matter that it was pure illusion, all scaffolding and panels that would pack down into a line of wagons when it was time to move on. It promised awe and glory, and all for pennies.

  The Electric Coliseum was a Bioscope show, exhibiting a program of moving pictures. A show would run around twenty minutes, each one containing four or five subjects, always ending with a comedy.

  Still carrying his parcel, Sebastian went to the Electric Coliseum’s pay booth.

  To the woman in the booth, he said, “Who’s in charge?”

  “Why?”

  “I want to talk to the boss.”

  “Mister Sedgewick’s inside. Oi.”

  Sebastian was halfway up the steps to the walk-up platform.

  “That’s sixpence, thank you, sir,” she said in a voice that managed to combine a superficial courtesy with a deeper sense of menace.

  He went back to the booth and paid up.

  So Sedgewick himself ran the show. That was no surprise. The man with his name on the fair was likely to own most of it, and from its size and its position in the grounds the Electric Coliseum was one of the fair’s g
randest attractions.

  That said, the tent was only one-third full. Sebastian took a seat. The subject playing was a comedy chase titled The Plumber and the Lunatics. It was a simple story, and built around a single joke-that of a plumber dropping his knife in an asylum, and running in terror from two inmates who were merely attempting to return it to him. But the audience liked it well enough.

  Then came a short film of some local parade, which seemed to last forever but which actually ran for three minutes. The grand finale was a novelty Vivaphone subject, in which film projection and a Gramophone record were roughly combined to present an actor in blackface and boxing garb performing The Night I Fought Jack Johnson.

  When all was done, an imposing bearded man in a tailcoat appeared before the screen and called out, “Side exits, please, ladies and gentlemen, and tell all your friends that our program changes daily.” Whereupon the Gavioli struck up and the floor shook with its bass notes as the audience flocked out into the fading daylight.

  Waiting to be among the last of them, Sebastian stayed back and got the bearded man’s attention.

  “Are you Abraham Sedgewick?”

  The man turned. He was half a head taller than Sebastian. His beard was streaked with gray and his morning suit was faintly shabby, as formal clothing would be if one’s workplace was a field.

  He said, “Who would be asking?”

  “Sebastian Becker. I’m the one who stepped in to release your consignment of curiosities on the railway. Did you take delivery?”

  “The specimens? Yes, I did. And I heard the story. Waxworks, eh?”

  “I’m in the area on the Lord Chancellor’s business.” Sebastian took out his letters of authority and showed Sedgewick the crest. He said, “I’m trying to do something for those two girls killed in Arnmouth.”

  “An appalling affair. Is it a charity benefit you’re looking for?”

  “No!” Sebastian said quickly. “No. I’m looking for your professional help.” He gestured toward the picture screen and said, “Over at the Wild West show they told me that you make these entertainments as well as screening them.”