by Arthur Slade
“Seven Dials? Are you certain?” he asked.
“I am always certain,” she replied with a degree of haughtiness.
The cabbie shook his head. She felt the cab jerk and shake as he climbed into his station at the back and flicked the reins. The horse trotted down the granite-paved street.
Octavia grinned. She knew that being confident and dressing in such finery intimidated lower-class men. The cabbie probably thought she was twenty years old. Maybe even twenty-five. Her own best guess at her real age was that she was fifteen. No one had written down her birth date at the orphanage, so she would never know for certain.
She had rehearsed the instructions in the letter several times, creating both a new persona and a plan. Acting had always come natural. She didn’t much like being herself, most of her childhood years. Better to invent someone new.
It was still light out when they drove through Seven Dials; seven streets met at a junction with a sundial in the center. It was a nasty neighborhood, and Octavia knew it well. She’d eaten and drunk in the gin shops and pubs, hidden in a cellar nearby to avoid Picklenose, a particularly nasty copper. Any of the ragged children with their dirty hands pressed up against shopwindows displaying third-hand dresses, could have been her a few years before. Even the sundial brought back memories: It was the first place she’d kissed a boy, a young gentleman. She had stolen his watch and wallet that day. A good haul.
Two horses snorted as they pulled an omnibus past Octavia’s cab, clerks in derby hats gawking out the windows. Below them was emblazoned an advertisement for Oakey’s Knife Polish. The omnibus nearly collided with a knacker’s wagon. Octavia wondered what madman had designed such an intersection. Ruffians ran in front of her cab, paying no mind to the danger presented by horse hooves. She directed the cabbie to a nearby pub.
“Please, hurry and do your errand, Madam,” said the cabbie. “These streets ain’t safe.”
She offered him a threepence. “This will ease your mind.” He coughed gently into his gloved hand and she dropped a few more coins into his palm.
When she entered the Red Boar, a cloud of burned bread, burped beer, and thick smoke made her wrinkle her nose in disgust. The pub was lit by one large oil lamp. Three customers, already sodden, were slumped against a table. One lifted red-rimmed eyelids to take her in. She told the portly innkeeper her purpose, giving him her kindest smile.
“Oh, you want to see Mr. W, do you?” the innkeeper grumbled. “He’s rooming at the top of the stairs. Oppie, show our guest the way.”
Octavia thought the man was speaking to the air, until a pile of rags behind the counter moved. A dirty-faced boy, thin as a broomstick, rubbed at his eyes, yawned, and stood up. “Be quick!” the innkeeper barked.
“This way, Missus,” the boy said, leading her through a door and up a set of creaking stairs.
“You got business wif Mr. W?” he asked. She judged him to be no more than eight. The only clean thing on him was a near fashionable red neckerchief tied over his collar.
“Yes, I do. Though I must admit I have never met him. What is he like?”
“I brings ’im ’is meal free times a day when I’m not cleaning out the slop for Mr. Berks. Sometimes Mr. W tells me stories. ’E reads ’em from a book.”
“So he lets you into his room?”
“No. I ent ever seen ’im. ’E reads ’em through the door. ’E’s a brainy sort—a master detective, ’e is. Find anyfing or anyun vat’s missing, one ’undred percentages guaranteed. ’E’s better van all ’em clowns in Scotland Yard.”
“How much does he pay you to say that?” she asked, kindly.
“Ma’am! God’s truth, I’m just repeating what I ’ear on the street. ’E’s a real good sot. And ’e says I could one day be ’is ’prentice. Oppie Wilkers, Detective. Nice ring, ent it? ’E’s generous, too. ’E gave me vis neckerchief, when I told ’im it was my birfday.”
“And was it your birthday?”
“Of course, miss. Of course!”
Octavia nodded. The boy was lying. She’d changed her own birth date on occasion to coax gifts out of unsuspecting boys. The kid was clever, but talkative. The bit about Mr. W never opening his door was an interesting piece of information. He must be a very private man.
She was led up a narrow staircase where a small broken window let in a few rays of light.
“’At’s where Mr. W stays. Top o’ the inn, it is. Only room up ’ere.” He pointed at a door. “I leaves ’is meals ’ere. ’E’s partial to chicken.” On the floor was a plate littered with bones. Oppie picked it up. “Wot else you need, Missus?”
“That will be all.” She slipped twopence into his hand and he gave her a near toothless grin.
“Be at your beck’n’call just down the stairs,” he said as he skipped away.
Octavia stood in front of Mr. W’s door and noted the lion that had been carved into it. She considered the stature of the guests who may have at one time stayed there.
She knocked and waited, but there was no reply, which gave her pause. The letter hadn’t said what to do in the event that her contact was unavailable. Perhaps she should leave a note. Then, just as she was about to call for Oppie, she heard the groan of floorboards.
“Yes?” asked a deep male voice.
“I have come about your notice in the paper. I need you to find something.”
A few moments passed. “What sort of item?” She sensed he was not using his real voice. The pitch occasionally wavered.
“A very important one. May I come in, Mr.… Mr.… ?”
“Mr. Wellington.”
“Wellington? Truly?”
“Yes. But I’m not the Duke of Wellington, obviously. And no, you may not come in. Those who employ me cannot see me.”
“Then how will I know I can trust you?”
“Never trust your eyes, that’s my motto. In any case, by remaining anonymous I can move around London Town and beyond without being recognized. If you don’t agree with the terms you are free to go. But you should know I have many satisfied customers.”
He spoke with a slight accent; she couldn’t place it. His tone was somber and each word deliberate.
A flicker of light on the door drew her attention. She now saw that a tiny peephole had been rigged in the eye of the carved lion.
“Mr. Wellington,” she said wryly, “are you watching me?”
A thud from the other side of the door. “No. Don’t be silly. I can’t see through doors.”
Knowing full well he could see her, she resisted the urge to smile.
“Well, then, if those are your terms, I suppose I have no choice but to accept them. And since this mission is of utmost importance, you must begin today.”
“Today? I am rather busy, of course, but, well … what is it you want me to find?”
“It will no doubt sound peculiar, but you see, the thing I have lost is … is my brother.”
The floorboards on the other side of the door creaked and she imagined him scratching his head. “Your brother?”
“Yes. My dear brother.”
“Has he left the country? Does he gamble?”
“Forgive me. I haven’t been clear. My brother’s not gone, exactly. I see him every day. But it’s at night … at night.” She touched her hand to her forehead as though she were about to faint. The door jiggled on its hinges.
“At night he disappears,” she whispered. “He’s a member of the Young Londoners Exploratory Society. He says he’s only attending meetings, but sometimes he returns looking crazed and … Mr. Wellington?”
“Yes.”
“Once I saw blood on his clothing.”
“His own blood?”
“He said it was a nosebleed, but I worry. He is, I don’t know … not himself. Sometimes I feel as though I’ve lost him.” Octavia pulled a lace handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed her eyes. The handkerchief’s corner was monogrammed with a large L.
“There, there. Please don’t cry. I will
do my best to discover the source of your brother’s difficulties.”
“So you’ll take on the case?” she said, breathlessly.
“Yes, but first I do have an important question. What is your name?”
“Audrette Featherstone,” she said with a sniff.
“Well, Miss Featherstone, please be so kind as to give me more details about your brother, beginning with a physical description, a list of his habits, and what he does during the day. Oh, and where he lives.”
“I have his address here.” She slid the note she had prepared under the door. She glimpsed a gloved finger as Mr. Wellington snatched the paper. She heard him clear his throat.
“Good. Good. Allow me a moment to fetch my journal.”
Octavia smiled. She had completed her assignment. Her employer would be pleased.
7
Rooftop Pursuit
A cloud of cold mist hung over London’s rooftops and drizzled onto Modo’s back. His large wet hands were clamped around the edge of the roof and he stared down on the city like a gargoyle, rarely blinking. Drops collected on his wide brow and trickled down his face, dripping off his crooked nose. Tharpa had taught him how to remain completely still, even to slow his heart rate.
The mask hanging from his belt was black, his night mask. He didn’t wear it unless he had to, because when he was jumping from rooftop to rooftop, it would sometimes slip and cover his eyes. The night he had nearly smashed his skull open on a crossbeam he learned a valuable lesson.
Directly below, flickering gaslights cast odd shadows across a courtyard. A figure in a frock coat appeared on the far side of the yard and walked toward him. As the man got closer, his pale face became clear. Modo cracked a thin smile. He’d been following Oscar Featherstone for over an hour, from his home in Highgate to this rooftop above the fancy shops and row houses of Marylebone. When Oscar caught a cab in Highgate, Modo had been forced to leap from roof to roof in pursuit, working up a terrible sweat.
Now Oscar walked past him and through an archway. Modo froze for a few more moments, then scrambled across the shingles, his short bowlegs surprisingly well suited to the steep slopes and changing angles. He leapt, his haversack swinging at his shoulder, and landed near the top of another roof, grasping a lightning rod to steady himself. A startled pigeon flew into the fog.
His target was walking down an alley, so Modo bounded silently alongside and above him, stifling a chuckle. The young gentleman had no idea he was being trailed.
Ever since Mr. Socrates dropped him in the middle of London, Modo had learned to use rooftops to his advantage. In the first frightening minutes after the carriage had pulled away, he’d scampered down several streets, darted through crowds, and finally, startled by the sight of a miserable drunk and his vicious dog, leapt up to a rooftop and huddled in a recess. From there he watched the day unfold. Finally, when night fell again, he crept across the shingles, lapping up gray water from an eaves trough and reaching through a window to steal a pork pie.
By the third day he was confident enough to return to the street, shifting his face into that of a young, handsome man. He helped lift a carriage stuck in deep septic mud and received a penny for his trouble. Soon he found other jobs that required his unusual strength. He slept in Hyde Park at night, until the police shooed him off, then he moved to a manure-rich stable. He squirreled his money away until he could afford a lice-infested room and a hot meal.
At night he would take to the rooftops and watch the Londoners: the furtive movements of young ruffians who pickpocketed gentlemen on their way to the opera; women with impossible hats and beautiful faces out for tea; bobbies on their patrols, clutching their truncheons; the brawlers shouting near the pubs. On the roofs he was safe and could observe much more than most anyone else in the city.
Once he watched a lower-class family walk to church. Their shabby clothes and shoes and tired eyes made him wonder if he was lucky to have been raised in Ravenscroft. Did Mr. Socrates save me from this sort of pauper life? But when the father put a hand on the son’s shoulder, a lump had risen in Modo’s throat.
It was a dog that had led him down the path to his current work as a detective. From a rooftop, he’d spotted a trim white hound with an ornate collar. It had leapt a low wall and was trapped in a blind alley. Modo heard the dog’s owner call for it. Modo dropped down to the alley and, thankfully, found the dog to be friendly. He still smiled when he recalled how it had licked his hand. He led it to its master and was paid threepence.
He was inspired to place small notices in the Times, advertising “Lost Things Found” under the name Wellington. He thought people would trust the name. The Duke of Wellington had been a war hero, after all. Soon there were many requests for his services, people needing help to find everything from the mundane (wallets and walking canes) to the curious (a highly praised violin and a wooden leg). In a matter of weeks Modo was able to move into the Red Boar, taking a room on the top floor with a coal stove and easy access to the roof.
He’d spent nearly every night of the past six months on these rooftops. They belonged to him now, the only place he felt free. He had each dormer and slanting surface memorized. He could get from his room to Trafalgar Square faster than any cab. And what made it all so easy was that Londoners never looked up; they were always watching the cobblestones or hunching under umbrellas.
But tonight, as he trailed Oscar Featherstone across Baker Street, Modo sensed he had moved up in the world. In this assignment he felt a certain prestige. No more searching for lost wallets. Now he was on a case; he was a real detective. This is what he’d been trained for.
It had been relatively simple to follow Oscar from his manor. The real test would be whether or not Modo could uncover what had been keeping the man up so late at night and frightening his sister so.
His sister.
Audrette.
The thought of her name made Modo feel warm on a cold night, and yes, even giddy She was so lovely, and spoke with angelic eloquence. He pictured the way she’d dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief. He had memorized the moment, so tragic, sad, and at the same time so beautiful. His heart was racing uncomfortably and he nearly lost his grip on the shingles.
“Don’t get addled, Modo,” he whispered angrily, adjusting his haversack so that it sat squarely on his humped back.
He crept along the rooftop until Oscar turned off the street and passed through an iron gate. At a two-story brick house, Oscar knocked on the door. The silhouette of the person who answered filled the doorframe, so Modo deduced it was a man. The hulking figure stepped aside so that Oscar could enter the house. The door closed.
Modo surveyed the area. The roof of the house was too high and too far away for him to swing onto it. The stone wall surrounding the yard wasn’t in good shape, sections crumbling here and there. But between him and the house, in the middle of the yard, sat an old gazebo that would likely support his weight.
Modo ran quietly to the edge of the rooftop and launched himself toward the gazebo, taking a few branches off the oak tree as he flew through the air. He landed on the structure’s rounded roof with a thud and immediately bounced from there to a large balcony directly above the front door of the house.
He’d tried to land lightly, but he’d made far too much noise, so he hid in a corner next to the drainpipe and waited until he was sure no one would come out looking. Tharpa would have been proud to see how he was putting his teachings into practice. Except, perhaps, for that jump.
He padded to the edge of the balcony and removed his bendable spyglass from his haversack. It had taken great patience and many hours to create the instrument, reshaping and joining two spyglasses with his large-knuckled, fumbling fingers. He extended his invention and put the eyepiece up to his right eye. He lowered the other end over the side of the balcony until he was looking into a dirty windowpane. The angle wasn’t perfect and the fish-eye lens distorted the view even more. Nonetheless, soon Modo got his bearings and slowly sc
anned the room. He could make out Oscar talking to a man who had his back to the window. The man was tall, his immense shoulders stuffed into a suit coat, his hair black as coal. Modo watched them until the man walked away from the window, opened a door, and ushered Oscar into another room, out of Modo’s sight.
Now the best way to find out what Oscar was up to would be to get inside the house. He could easily break in through the balcony door, but he had no idea what, or who, was on the other side. It would be much more logical to walk in through the front door. That would require a transformation. He backed up into the corner of the balcony again.
“You will always be ugly,” Mr. Socrates had regularly reminded him over the years. “Always. But you are better able to adapt than any chameleon. Be thankful for it.”
At the moment Modo was feeling anything but thankful as he checked his pocket watch, then turned his will to altering his body. Fire burned in his veins as his bones shifted in their sockets. He’d performed this “adaptive transformation,” as Mr. Socrates called it, thousands of times. He had worked to perfect each change.
He closed his eyes, grimacing, picturing the man he wanted to look like. He chose an appearance inspired by a sketch of Peterkin, a favorite character from the novel The Coral Island. Mrs. Finchley had allowed him to read it, but he had to promise to hide the book whenever Mr. Socrates visited. Modo’s facial plates shifted and became angular, his skin stretching smoothly across his new skull and straightened nose.
His arms became thinner and longer, his chest smaller. And finally he turned his will to the hump, the dreadful hump. He forced it to sink into his flesh.
He picked up his pocket watch. Three minutes. Mr. Socrates would have been pleased.
Sweating and tired, Modo patted his face to be sure he hadn’t missed any unsightly lumps. He could only hold this shape for five hours, at the most. Then his muscles would grow weak and he’d slip back into his natural, repulsive self.
His clothing looked ridiculous on his new, thin frame, so he took another cautious look around and stripped to his underclothes. Out of his haversack he pulled a set of fine breeches and yanked them on, followed by a shirt and a shawl-collared vest. He tied a brown cravat around his neck, slipped on good shoes and a frock coat. He stuffed his mask under his old clothes in the haversack and left the bag in the shadows.
