River's Edge

by James P. Blaylock

  Hereafter Farm, Mother Laswell’s domain, was a spiritualist commune along Bohemian lines with a distinct intolerance for any variety of cruelty, mean-spiritedness, or disregard for the natural world. Frobisher listened with an apparent show of interest to Mother’s catalogue of complaints against the Majestic Paper Mill. Her women’s society, Friends of the River Medway, had undertaken to go to war against the recalcitrant mill. It had been she who had asked St. Ives and Hasbro to collect water samples and dead animals along the river’s shores, and St. Ives had done so with a will. She was a good woman—an example to them all—but she had a way of involving those roundabout her, particularly St. Ives, in her troubles and intrigues. It was a flattering thing, really—she evidently had a high regard for him and Alice—but she sometimes seemed to be born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward, to quote the book of Job.

  St. Ives heard the cheerful sound of wooden batons knocking against pins from the direction of the skittles green, where Alice had taken up a challenge from Hasbro and Mrs. Langley. Clara Wright, one of Mother Laswell’s charges and Finn Conrad’s particular friend, was Alice’s partner. Clara was blind, although she seemed to have—indeed, apparently did have—paranormal powers that lent her a sense of sight. She could throw a skittles baton with uncommon accuracy, taking aim with her outstretched elbow (through which she “saw”) and then flicking the baton with a sideways motion that often enough knocked the pin out of the circle. Such things didn’t stand to reason, but as Alice had pointed out, a baton knocking down a skittles pin was inarguable.

  It came to St. Ives that he was sitting apart from his guests like an indifferent host, and so he found a bottle of beer for himself and joined Mother Laswell and Gilbert at the table. Gilbert pushed the walnut bowl toward him and said to Mother Laswell, “But do you see, ma’am, if I was an investor I might induce them to make useful changes to the mill.”

  “Not at the expense of their almighty profits, you wouldn’t, Mr. Frobisher,” Mother Laswell told him evenly. “They’ve talked it back and forth until its been ironed flat, and there’s been pieces written in the newspaper—sludge removal and charcoal filtration and that sort of thing. But it’s mere rubbish. There’s dead fish and dead birds to show for it, and sick girls, too. You told me of it yourself—poor Daisy Dumpel spewing blood. That mealy-mouthed Charles Townover is a withered stick of a man. He won’t cram himself through the eye of God’s needle, camel or no camel, and his hellfire son is worse. Men like that will drag you down to their level, Mr. Frobisher; you can’t raise them up to yours. I’m heartily sick of bad men. I believe you to be one of the good ones, however. The Professor has told me that you built an entire wing of the Natural History Museum.”

  “Yes, ma’am, that is to say I funded the building of it—the Bird Wing, I like to call it, ha ha. I’ll admit that I’m keen on preservation. I’m troubled by what you’re telling me.” He took several walnuts from the bowl and tossed them into his mouth.

  “Then you’ll attend tomorrow night’s meeting of the Friends?” Mother Laswell asked. “There are interesting people coming down from London, and I’ve got an amusement planned. You’ll hear Dr. Pullman’s results and perhaps see the paper mill in a different light, despite the very fine box of paper you showed me. I have no argument with their paper, I can assure you. The Professor will attend our soirée. Isn’t that so, Professor?”

  “I will indeed,” St. Ives said. “Alice is a member of the Friends, and so is Mrs. Langley.”

  “Then I’ll be there,” Gilbert said, although from St. Ives’s perspective he appeared to be apprehensive. Mother Laswell’s mention of “interesting people coming out from London” no doubt meant her friends from the Fabian Society and the Fellowship of the New Dawn, some of whom were vocal socialists and were recently taken up for sedition, although the charges had been dropped. Certainly it promised to be an entertaining evening by some definition of the word.

  The conversation shifted to more neutral territory now, involving recent improvements that Alice and St. Ives had made to the grounds: indoor plumbing in the hoppers’ huts, with a leach-field of rock and sand on low ground behind, which was now covered in blue-green clover…

  St. Ives was interrupted by the laughter of his approaching children, Eddie and Cleo, who had taken an instant liking to the girl Larkin. Larkin was fond of the spoils that a life with the wealthy Gilbert Frobisher offered, but she hadn’t lost her piratical flair, and had immediately made Cleo and Eddie a part of her crew. The children had ridden off toward Hereafter Farm aboard Dr. Johnson, the resident elephant, and they emerged now from the trees, riding easily on the elephant’s ornate saddle. Finn Conrad, a young man who had fallen in with the St. Ives family several years ago and who lived in a cottage on the property, led the elephant by a halter, walking alongside Mrs. Tully, the wife of Hereafter’s gardener. She saw Mother Laswell and hurried forward now. Bad news, St. Ives thought, seeing her face.

  “The boy from the Chequers was out to the farm just now, ma’am,” Mrs. Tully said when she drew up to the table. “He brought out a message and the daily news from Snodland and said it was important. I gave it a quick look and came a-running.” She handed across a folded bit of foolscap and a copy of the Snodland Gazette.

  Mother Laswell opened the note, read it to herself, and said, “Well, then! Daisy’s quit the mill. She’ll live at Hereafter. She’s gone into London first, however.” She looked up, shook her head, and said, “I wish the girl had come straight to me. Bill could have gone into London with her.”

  “Now the Gazette, ma’am,” Mrs. Tully said uneasily.

  Mother Laswell read over the front page silently, slumped back into her chair looking half destroyed and said, “We’ll wait for the others, I believe, so that we don’t have to consider this twice. Never mind the children, however. There’s things children oughtn’t to hear.”

  St. Ives saw that the skittles players were coming along in a group, and that Boggs and Bill Kraken were just now descending the kitchen stairs with immense meat pies on a platter and a vast tray of other dishes, steam rising from the lot of it. He wondered what piece of news was so vital that it had to be discussed at a celebration, but there was no polite way to put Mother Laswell off.

  Alice came around behind him, squeezed his shoulder, and sat down. “It was a draw,” she said breathlessly, “until Clara knocked out three pins one after another. We… What’s amiss?” she asked Mother Laswell.

  “It’s Daisy Dumpel, Alice. Perhaps you remember her from the meeting two weeks ago?”

  “Of course.” Alice’s smile had disappeared.

  “Daisy is…was a Paper Doll from the Majestic Mill,” she said to them. She studied the newspaper once again and then, pausing in between statements to read, she said, “Daisy was taken from her room in the Chequers Inn last night, accompanied by an unidentified man. She had told Mrs. Swinton of the Chequers that she possessed a ticket for this morning’s train to London—which she told me the same in her note. She was murdered, however, and her body was found on the riverbank behind the tannery in Snodland. They’ve arrested her murderer, a union man who had been staying thereabouts by the name of Bill Henry. He’d been seen bothering Daisy two days back, as was reported to the Constable. Two mill hands found the man by chance in the Malden Arms. He was drunk and bragging on what he’d done, not knowing who he was talking to. Daisy had been let go from the mill and paid one hundred pounds as severance. This Bill Henry took it from her. It was in his pocket, in an envelope with Henley Townover’s seal on it, which the constable found when he arrived. The man denied it, of course. That’s the long and the short of it. He’s confined in the Snodland jail.”

  The party sat quietly, giving Mother Laswell time to come to grips with the news. After a time, she said, “I wish the girl had come to me, poor child.” She shook her head sadly. “The God-damned mill. Is there no end to it? My appetite has failed me, I’m afraid. Would it go too much against custom if I begged off,
Professor?”

  “No, indeed, ma’am,” St. Ives said.

  Alice helped Mother Laswell to her feet, and the company watched in silence as Bill and she set off arm-in-arm in the direction of Hereafter Farm, walking slowly, Mrs. Tully following along behind.

  The silence was short-lived, however, for the children, having put Dr. Johnson away in the barn, came racing toward them across the green now, shouting with laughter and restoring equilibrium. They piled in around the table, holding out their hands to show that they’d washed away the elephant. Alice shushed them so that St. Ives could say a blessing over the food. The platters and bottles of wine started around the table, and St. Ives saw that Finn Conrad and Clara Wright were surreptitiously holding hands, both of them smiling. The Gazette still lay on the table, Daisy Dumpel’s note sticking out of the pages like a bookmark. St. Ives picked it up and tucked it into his vest.

  “God between us and all harm,” he muttered, and right then he saw that there was a red deer in among the distant rose bushes, audaciously eating the yellow blooms in broad daylight. His first thought was to chase it off, but the thought filled him with self-doubt, and instead he wished the deer a good supper and a lucky passage and asked Alice to pass him the salt-cellar.

  Chapter 9

  The Burning

  HEREAFTER FARMS, WITH its big stone house, its barn and commodious glass house and cottages, was alive with the glow of gaslamps and lanterns on the night of the soirée. It was a balmy night, and there was the phantom music of a violin on the air—Mr. Tully the musical gardener, no doubt, somewhere unseen. People stood about outdoors in groups, many of them holding glasses or bottles, and St. Ives could see that there were more revelers indoors as well, fifty or sixty people in all. He and Gilbert Frobisher stood before the door of the barn. St. Ives felt like an intruder, and Gilbert, perhaps, felt the same way, for he was uncharacteristically silent.

  A photographer in a tall top-hat had set up his camera within a canvas enclosure. As St. Ives and Gilbert watched, a lavishly dressed woman with a long cigarette holder in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other sat down on the photographer’s stool. The photographer said something to her, and she struck a pose. There was a flash of illumination from a hooded tin plate. She vacated the stool, and her place was taken by a man in evening clothes and wearing a monocle. Yet another man, this one with a pencil and note-book and with the look of a reporter about him, hurried after the woman with the cigarette holder, apparently trying to attract her attention.

  “That rather lavish creature is Edith Nesbitt,” Mother Laswell said to St. Ives and Gilbert, having come out of the barn door behind them, leading a grey mule by a rope. The mule was caparisoned in a colorful sort of shirt, and he wore a straw boater fastened beneath his neck with a ribbon.

  “Should we have heard of Miss Nesbitt?” Gilbert asked. “I’m afraid that I’m abysmally uninformed when it comes to society, although I admire the ivory tube through which she smokes. The coal of the cigarette goes on before her like a lamp.”

  “She’s married to Hubert Bland, the socialist and opium eater,” Mother Laswell told them. “Married after a fashion, I should say. She’s had children by the man in any event, as have several other women. She’s an aspiring poet who writes tracts under the name Fabian Bland. Quite an interesting specimen and a friend of Mr. Bernard Shaw, some say a very good friend indeed.”

  “It all sounds very Bohemian,” Gilbert said. “Who is this fellow at the other end of the tether, then? I envy his hat.”

  “This is Ned Ludd, Mr. Frobisher.”

  “Himself?” Frobisher asked. “The wild-eyed destroyer of textile mills?”

  “The very man, reincarnated as a mule. Our own Clara has taught him the alphabet.”

  “Good to make your acquaintance, Ned,” Frobisher said to the mule, stroking the animal’s neck. There was a gunpowder flash from the direction of the camera, and the mule rolled his eyes and shied sideways.

  “Ned don’t like the flash,” Mother Laswell said. “Animals who live in straw have a hatred of fire.”

  “Eminently sensible,” St. Ives said. He saw that Alice, Mrs. Langley, and Clara Wright were approaching the environs of the camera. “Is the photographer a local man, then?” he asked.

  “I admit that I don’t know,” Mother Laswell said. “I surely did not summon him. He must have come down from London with the others. Some of these celebrities are quite vain, you know. But I must hurry away, gentlemen. The Friends of the River Medway had best be photographed together. We could do with some celebrity of our own. No hiding beneath a bushel basket for us.” Leading Ned Ludd, she hurried off to join Alice and Mrs. Langley for a photographing.

  “Do they hang capitalists in this part of the world?” Frobisher asked.

  “Not commonly,” St. Ives said. “I myself have never been to a meeting of Mother Laswell’s Society, however, so I can’t swear that a hanging is unusual. You and I will be outsiders together. They’ll have to hang the both of us.”

  “I’m relieved to hear you say that, brother. She seems to believe that I’m a right thinker, but this is monumentally strange to me. Tubby is always insisting that I should listen rather than speak, but of course I generally pay him no mind. Tonight, however, I’ll heed his advice. Listening rarely insults anyone’s sensibilities.”

  “I’ll follow your example,” St. Ives said. He saw Dr. Pullman now, just then drawing up in his wagon. “I’ll introduce you to Lamont Pullman,” he said to Gilbert. “He’s an eminent naturalist as well as the local coroner, and has been looking into the depredations of the Majestic Paper Mill.” They approached Dr. Pullman, a small man who wore a discreditable laboratory coat stained with unidentifiable substances. After Pullman and Frobisher had shaken hands, the three men examined the many jars on Pullman’s wagon, each containing a poisoned bird, fish, or amphibian floating in preservative spirits. Dr. Pullman pointed out cankers and areas of rotted or discolored flesh, all of the damage consistent with the poisons in the water samples taken from Eccles Brook, downstream from the mill. St. Ives could see that Frobisher was deflated by what he saw. The evidence was inarguable. They carried the lot of them indoors and uncrated them.

  Very soon Mother Laswell herded the assembled guests into the house, drawing their collective attention to the jars. St. Ives and Frobisher shifted into a far doorway to listen to Dr. Pullman’s address to the gathering. St. Ives heard little that he did not already know, except for a general confirmation. He heard mutters of disapproval roundabout him, however, including from Gilbert himself.

  Mother Laswell followed Pullman’s account with a general call for action against the enormities of the mill and passed out a pamphlet promoting the work of the Friends of the River Medway. She thanked Dr. Pullman and led the crowd outdoors again, through the open French windows toward the back of the house, where a broad meadow stretched away in the direction of the woods. St. Ives saw at once that the meadow was to be the site of the “amusement.”

  “I’m in a pickle,” Gilbert said to him when they’d found a convenient place from which to watch. “I’ve told Charles Townover that I’ll be up to see him tomorrow about the investment. But I find that I cannot. This is not as simple as it had seemed, and if there’s trouble at the mill it’ll tar me with that same brush, or some variety of filthy brush. I believe that I’ll tell him I’m ill in order to gain some time. I’ll send a message.”

  “You’re wise to do so. Here’s something, though. I’ve been thinking that I might go up to the mill tomorrow myself to have a look at the man. Would it be sensible for me to introduce myself as your friend? I could convey your message, extend your regrets, and it might open a door that might otherwise be closed to me.”

  “You have no scruples against telling a small untruth on my behalf?”

  “None whatsoever,” St. Ives said. “Finn Conrad would happily show you the resident birds tomorrow. There’s a particularly cheerful owl in one of the oaks.”
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br />   “Capital. Ah!” he said, gesturing with his forehead. “There’s Mother Laswell getting set to amuse us.”

  The meadow grasses had been scythed flat, so that the area looked something like a cricket pitch. Makeshift wooden tables sat around the perimeter, each with a lantern in the center, and people had made their way to the tables now and crowded around them, laughing and talking. On the green itself sat pasteboard buildings, six of them, the walls waist-high, the buildings connected by pasteboard walkways and fences, all of it realistically painted, right down to the roof slates. There were windows and doors cut into the buildings, along with chimneys and stairways. There was a carriage house and barn—all of it accurate, at least as St. Ives remembered it from his adventures on the premises of the mill several nights back. A banner stretched between two wooden poles over the top of the construction read, “Majestic Paper Mill.” Paper bunting swooped away from the banner to the roofs of the various buildings.

  “This is Mother Laswell’s work,” St. Ives said to Frobisher. “She has artistic talents.”

  “She’s done a thoroughgoing job of it,” Gilbert said. “She’s even got the skylights in the roof.” I cannot imagine why she’s gone to the trouble, given that she loathes the place.”

  Mother Laswell herself strode into the center of the green along with Bill Kraken. Kraken, who most often had a barmy look about him, with unkempt hair and a singularly crooked gait that made him appear to be staggering along in a gale-force wind, was comparatively well groomed. He was dressed in a waistcoat and embroidered vest, and had a battered bowler hat pulled down low over his forehead. He carried something in his hand—a rush torch, from the look of it.