The Lamplighter

by Anthony O'Neill

  He watched as she put aside the washboard and rinsed the mitts in a sink of water. The boiler lid was stammering nearby.

  “I was short with you,” he heard himself admitting. “But I do not have to offer reasons.”

  She squeezed and swirled.

  “And I have since had time to give the matter thought.” He forcibly had to remind himself of his purpose in being there. “I was wondering if you have had any more dreams.”

  She sniffed but did not answer.

  “More dreams of murder.”

  She did not even acknowledge him.

  “I have asked a question, woman.”

  She shrugged her scrawny frame. “And I have not answered.”

  He drew air through his teeth. “So you have had no dreams, is that it?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “You can’t remember.” She seemed determinedly evasive, but he could not bring himself to force the issue. He recalled the French words of the message and tried instead to establish a link. “Well, what of the second message, then—the one you spoke of?”

  “What of it?”

  “You said some details returned to you in fragments.”

  “I did.”

  He shifted. “Well, might you have recalled the language of that message?”

  “Why should I have done so?”

  “You said the words were strange. And you said the killer had traveled far. Have you seen any further messages like it?”

  She frowned and abruptly turned. “Why?” she asked. “Have you found a third message?”

  He could not help it, his eyes fell away—and only with great effort did he force them back up. “I have found no message,” he lied. But like the Wax Man she seemed to have some talent for gazing through his skull and leaving him vacant with her indifference. And when she turned back to the sink, drawing the plug so that the water drained through the cloth, he almost gasped with relief. “I believe, in any event,” he managed, “that you called the killer a dark force.”

  “I suppose I did.”

  “Do you have anything to add to that?”

  “Why should I?”

  “It is too vague a description.”

  “As you have already told me.”

  Groves cleared his throat. “Did you happen to see a cloak?”

  “A cloak?”

  “When you saw the killer. Was he wearing a cloak?”

  She seemed on the verge of frowning. “He might have worn a cloak. It was dark, as I said to you.”

  “Aye.” He sniffed. On one hand her new attitude seemed to confirm that her previous demeanor had been a fraud, and she genuinely had nothing to offer. On the other there was something decidedly curious about her, and he could not overcome the notion that, rather than undermining her credibility, her petulance only gave it weight. He watched as she moved for the boiler. “You are an odd one, aren’t you,” he tried.

  No answer.

  “What do you—” he began to ask, but she removed the lid and steam abruptly swept through the washhouse, swatting at the candle flames and stinging his face. He blinked as the room flooded with mist, and for a few chilling moments, not seeing her, he sensed only a bestial presence, heard a guttural gurgle, and his skin prickled fearfully. But then the steam dissipated and he finally located her, leaning over the bubbling cauldron with a wooden pole.

  “What do you do?” he asked, straightening. “During the day?”

  She shrugged. “I work.”

  “Where?”

  “For Arthur Stark.”

  “The bookseller?” Groves knew of him, an old eccentric with radical political views and a crowded store near the University.

  Evelyn did not answer. She had inserted the pole deep into the water and was stirring around for her garments.

  Groves wet his lips. “And can you explain why you are here,” he demanded, “at this ungodly hour?”

  “Why do you ask? Is it against the law?”

  He was about to reply, but he saw her bending into the boiler, fishing deep, and he had the rogue, illicit hope that he might catch a glimpse of her floating undergarments. He almost teetered over, in fact, making sure he saw the items when they came to the surface. But it was only bed linen—pillowcases and a sheet. She transferred them to the sink in preparation for the wringer and he settled back on his heels.

  “It’s past midnight now,” he insisted, frustrated. “When…when do you sleep?”

  She returned the lid to the boiler. “When I’m tired.”

  “That’s not a proper answer. Do I need to remind you who I am?”

  She wiped her brow with the back of an arm. “I slept before,” she said. “It was enough.”

  He thought about it. “You slept through the evening?”

  “I suppose I did.”

  “And when did you awaken?”

  “When I was no longer tired.”

  “You would be well advised not to be bold with me, woman.”

  She sighed. “Half an hour ago.”

  “So you were asleep through ten o’clock, in any event?”

  Silence.

  “And you are able to report no dreams? Not even fragments?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Might you have heard of a certain Mr. Ainslie?”

  “Never.” She blinked, as though something had just occurred to her, and turned to stare at him with her cobalt eyes gleaming. “Why do you ask?”

  He felt a most perplexing current bolt through him. “I…I have no further questions,” he said in a forced sneer, and clapped his hat to his head. “Good evening to you, then.”And, loosening himself with effort from her spell, he turned and marched off into the night with a face wet with steam and sweat.

  Visions of the dead Ainslie returned to me again and again through the night, and for this reason I slept hardly at all, he wrote in his journal, but it was a lie. For it was in fact images of Evelyn Todd that plagued his slumber: the inexplicable contrast in her bearing, her hostile eyes, her unconvincing denial of any significant dream or knowledge of Ainslie. And then there was Ce Grand Trompeur, too, the mysterious message left behind by the killer. He had forgotten it at the time, but she had all but admitted in the Squad Room that she knew French (how could it have slipped his mind?). And so by dawn the little darkly dressed creature in the washhouse, for all her evident frailty, seemed eminently capable, in his delirious mind, at least, of transforming into a homicidal force wrapped in heat and steam, and with every rattle of his frost-coated windowpanes he shuddered under his quilts, recalling the Wax Man’s prescient words—“the power a woman can work on a man’s mind is greater than any witch’s potion”—and terrified that at any moment she might pounce out of the darkness, wrap her bony limbs around him, and clamp her talons on his thumping heart.

  Chapter X

  CANAVAN SLEPT in a cubbyhole at the very top of a corkscrew stair in a twelve-story pinnacle of a tenement overhanging Waverley Station, his fitful slumber interpolated with departure whistles and the hiss of gathering steam. On Sunday mornings it was his habit to put on his faded morning coat and a carpet tie and attend an Old Town church of no particular preference—he was of mixed parentage, and believed the Apostles themselves had no denomination—and afterward roam the back alleys distributing morsels of food to Edinburgh’s homeless dogs (this because the city’s ash buckets, the primary source of the strays’ sustenance, were not put out for collection on Saturday nights, and the Sabbath for the dogs was a bewildering day of hunger and despair).

  On this particular Sunday, however, the Third of Advent, he dressed in an irregular coat and duck trousers and headed with particular haste across the city to the majestic St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Palmerston Place, the New Town. It was significantly out of his way, but he knew that in front of his more commonly attended churches the dogs would already be gathering expectantly, and, with no money to buy them food and a heart as heavy as a church bell, he could not bear to face them or to pre
sent them even fleetingly with a promise he could not fulfill. Nor could he bring himself, during the service, to accept the consecrated Host, for fear that he might be tempted to hold it on his tongue and later distribute it among his own starving congregation.

  It was an unusually solemn service, the week’s horrors of a type that could not be denied with the most devoutly muttered prayers. Even in the pews the parishioners clustered in protective numbers and shot reflexive glances at the slightest shuffle or creak. The bishop, who had many years earlier presided over the funeral of Colonel Munnoch, saw fit to remind them that evil gains strength through fear, but in fact quails at the contest, so that no one should think for a minute that any malefactor is incurable, or greater than a true Christian’s resistance. Canavan slipped out during the offertory hymn:

  My heart is pained, nor can it be

  At rest, till it finds rest in Thee.

  He was relieved to find no dogs waiting outside the main doors, but equally surprised to spot a familiar figure, dressed in a Norfolk jacket and Sunday bowler, sitting patiently on a bench nearby. Since he had not informed anyone where he would be—or even that he was no longer employed—he suspected that the Professor had followed him, or even divined his whereabouts with some newly discovered intuition.

  “You know,” McKnight said, removing his pipe and getting to his feet, “I mentioned your practice—your dog-feeding practice—in a lecture some weeks ago. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Always happy to assist the cause of education,” Canavan said, privately disconcerted that his concerns had been read so plainly.

  “I did not mention you by name, of course, but I said I knew a certain illogical fellow who persists in feeding the homeless dogs of the city, thus ensuring that they are sufficiently nourished to beget even larger generations of strays, compounding the problem—and the hunger, and the suffering—indefinitely.”

  “It’s always been my belief,” Canavan countered, “that kind gestures themselves beget generations of kind gestures, so that whatever the number of the strays, there will always be an equal number of those willing to provide.”

  “Perhaps,” McKnight conceded. “But that does not change the immutable law. With very minor fluctuations, the percentage of starving strays in any city will always remain the same.”

  Canavan was resilient. “If God can provide for the sparrows of the world, I believe there’s certainly enough room for me to look after the stray dogs of Edinburgh.”

  McKnight chuckled. “Very well put,” he said, seemingly happy to concede defeat, and he gestured across the church grounds. “Have you time for a walk?”

  “I suppose so,” Canavan agreed, not wanting to give the indication that he had time for almost anything. “But to where?”

  “Call it a perambulation. Where distance and discussion lead to a mysterious destination.”

  “I hope I won’t regret it.”

  “Nonsense,” McKnight said. “You were veritably born for it.”

  The two men took off at once past the cathedral scaffolding and the foundations of the chapter house, and without further ado the Professor introduced his more pressing interest. “You’ve heard of the carnage at Waverley Station, of course?”

  “It’s been difficult to avoid,” Canavan agreed somberly. “What have you learned of the victim?”

  “Very little,” McKnight admitted. “The man has published no literature and has had no literature published about him.”

  “From what I know of him, the man wouldn’t have enjoyed any commitment, even that of ink.”

  “You’ve discovered some details?”

  “Almost accidentally.” Having spent much of the previous day in the shady district of Happy Land, in fact, Canavan had been exposed to a great deal of gossip about the man, and had listened with a strange sense of duty.

  “Go on.”

  “Well…” Canavan shrugged. “The victim was well known to numerous fallen ladies.”

  “That much could be speculated.”

  “A dealer in indecent prints. Recently involved in the Mammoth Diorama at Albert Hall—those huge pictures of the Afghan and Kenyan wars. Staged a few performances by some French ventriloquists. Was based in Edinburgh, but moved freely through the country, and to other shores.”

  “And in less recent times?” McKnight asked. “Prior to the death of Colonel Munnoch, for example?”

  “I think he might have lived in London for some time. He’d been a soldier at some stage. He was always displaying his scars to the ladies. Had a particularly noticeable one under his eye.”

  “Did he serve in Munnoch’s regiment?”

  “I don’t think so, but that part of his life seems deliberately veiled. He had some experience with the Ashanti, and liked boasting about his time on the Gold Coast. But he was a renowned liar, from all accounts, so it all could be fantasy. Thus, I suppose, the note—Ce Grand Trompeur. Did you hear of that?”

  “It was in the newspapers.”

  “Any idea what it means? Some connection with his occasional visits to France?”

  But McKnight was curiously evasive. “Look at these houses,” he said, pausing at the corner of Manor Place and with a sweep of his cane indicating the splendid uniformity of the Coates Crescent villas. “David Hume was one of the first residents of the New Town, you know. The great empiricist in this little quarter of reason and efficiency. Houses of infinite harmony, gardens of perfect precision, streets of glorious symmetry. Everything measured, tagged, compartmentalized, and assigned an identity. A triumph in greystone over the ungodly disorder of nature and all things beyond human control.”

  Canavan admired the sunlit street. “You seem to be suggesting there’s blasphemy here, while others might see God in the very desire to be clean and disciplined.”

  “Blasphemy is an incongruous concept in the New Town. Blasphemy is a word that will soon be redefined in man’s own image, when God Himself is pushed to the margins.”

  “I am speaking to Thomas McKnight the Atheist?” Canavan asked, puzzled.

  The Professor smiled. “This way,” he said, gesturing again, and they crossed a largely deserted Maitland Street. “And back through the mists of time.”

  They were moving directly from modern Edinburgh to its dark medieval heart, and Canavan now became alarmed. If they were to venture into the Old Town they would come within range of the hungry strays. The dogs would approach him imploringly and the pain of his inadequacy would be exacerbated. He buried his hands in his pockets.

  “There’s a lass, is there not,” McKnight asked, “who claims to have dreamed of the crimes in unusual detail?”

  Canavan nodded, surprised that the Professor had heard of her, for this had been printed in no newspaper. “It’s what they say.”

  “What have you heard of her?”

  “She lives off Candlemaker Row in a tiny room of paper-thin walls.” A neighbor, Canavan could have added, to a makeshift brothel, the denizens of which could not decide if she was angelic or deranged. “A private woman, who lives alone. I’ve been told there is something genuinely strange about her. She is,” he added, “from Ireland. Or claims to be.”

  “And there are so many impostors around.” McKnight smiled, before going on, “But do you believe her claims?”

  “I’ve never met her. Though I’ve no reason to doubt her.”

  “Then how might you explain her powers?”

  “I’ve not given it any thought. It’s likely just a coincidence. Why? Do you think it really has some relevance?”

  But McKnight again became frustratingly enigmatic. “You know,” he said, “there are African tribes that believe the soul leaves the body in dreams, and the dreamer is directly responsible for all the actions there committed.”

  Canavan could not quite see the point, but was not slow to take up the challenge. “The Church, on the other hand, has decided that man is not guilty for acts committed in his dreams.”

  “Aye,” McKnight agre
ed cynically as they began climbing King’s Stable Road along the skirts of the Castle. “The Church spent centuries building up its defenses against all sorts of pernicious thoughts, and yet felt particularly vulnerable in sleep. Hence the notion, from Augustine and Jerome among others, that dreams come from Satan.”

  “In their dreams,” Canavan conceded, “the saints were the victims of ungodly desires. To call dreams the work of the devil, then, is a largely innocent reaction—a mistake.”

  McKnight chuckled. “Oh, I did not say it was a mistake. The truth is that we are rarely more set upon than we are in dreams. Terrors, conflict, ungovernable impulses, the loss of all reason and logic—dreams are the showcase for unconscious fears and desires, and it is not for us to say that they might not be the work of some malignant force. The genius aliquis malignus of Descartes’s dream, perhaps. The devil in all of us.”

  “That’s the philosophical devil, not the biblical one.”

  McKnight pursed his lips. “The only difference, as I see it, is that philosophy is yet to decide if the devil represents truth or lies. The Bible is less ambiguous. That verse underlined and left with Colonel Munnoch, for instance. From the page removed from our very own Bible.”

  “A theory yet to be proved.”

  “John 8:44, in any case.” They passed under the King’s Bridge. “Could you recite the entire verse, and not just the underlined phrase?”

  Canavan had been examining the verse, in fact, just the previous day, and was able to recite it practically verbatim. “‘Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and he abodes not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.’”

  “The father of lies…” McKnight said, savoring the words. “A phrase that returns us, does it not, to Ce Grand Trompeur—the Great Deceiver.”

  They drifted into the Grassmarket, former site of hangings and witch burnings, and now crowded with banks, coffeehouses, and hotels.