Gallows Court

by Martin Edwards

  The basement chamber was as well-equipped as the smok­ing room of a gentlemen’s club, but twice as large and with a high ceiling. The air was fresher than in the tunnel, thanks, Jacob presumed, to some unseen but effective system of ventilation. Leather armchairs and Chesterfields provided luxurious seating, while one wall was devoted to a vast wine rack and a bar. On the facing wall hung an assortment of tapestries inspired, Jacob presumed, by erotica of the most violent and outré kind. Only a few days ago, he would have been appalled by the acts they depicted, but nothing would ever shock him again. Doors were let into the side walls, and at the far end of the room was a dais. On it stood a bizarre and intimidating figure. A larger than life-size gilded statue of a naked woman.

  Gaudino pushed him into the room, and slammed the steel door behind them. Sara gestured towards their surroundings. ‘Welcome to the home of the Damnation Society.’

  Juliet Brentano’s Journal

  6 February 1920

  A year has passed. I find it almost impossible to believe. Everything has changed, and yet on the surface, life on Gaunt continues much as before.

  The decline in the Judge’s mental state frustrates me. The best way to discover the truth about my parents’ deaths would be to persuade him to tell me. Persuade him, or force him. I’ve tried both methods, but always in vain. And I’m not sure I could rely on anything he did say.

  So learning the truth will take time, but I have time in abundance. Henrietta says I’m headstrong, but even she admits that nobody can match me for patience and persistence. My strength of will enables me to create a new life under a new name. A name that once made my flesh crawl.

  I have become Rachel Savernake.

  33

  Pain and fear and hopelessness numbed Jacob. Nobody knew he was here, and he had no chance of untying himself. If only Oakes had not set off with the ambulance carrying Rachel’s body to the mortuary. Apart from the inspector, he could think of nobody else – certainly not a soul from the Clarion – who would give his current whereabouts a second thought.

  ‘Over the past fifty years,’ Sara said, ‘this room has witnessed countless esoteric entertainments. Senior members compete to conjure up creative ceremonial rituals. The notion of sacrifice brings out the worst in the human imagination. The Pear of Anguish, the Wheel of Suffering, the Brazen Bull, the Judas Cradle. Ingenious means of inflicting peculiar agonies. A dishonest cook was baked in a kiln, an obese mistress boiled in a cauldron of hot fat. All for the delectation of the fellowship.’

  Jacob blinked tears out of his eyes. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Patience, Jacob. Thanks to Rachel Savernake, our numbers are depleted. But people will start arriving within the half-hour. This evening, they will elect me to reign over them.’

  ‘What do you intend to do to me?’ he whispered.

  She beckoned him to follow her as she approached the huge gilded figure on the dais. His heart thumped as if about to burst. When he refused to move, the manservant slapped him on the temple, and shoved him forward.

  ‘May I introduce you to Apega?’

  The dazzling lights from the crystal chandeliers made it difficult for him to focus his eyes. Battered and bruised, he’d have tumbled to the ground had Gaudino not been propping him up.

  ‘Apega?’

  ‘Apega was married to the legendary tyrant king of Sparta. To deal with his enemies, he built a mechanical device in the image of his wife. Its purpose was to torment his foes. Apega the automaton bristled with sharp blades. Her loving embrace was lethal.’

  Jacob saw the blades. Innumerable small but wickedly sharp points pimpled the huge naked body from head to toe.

  ‘This was two thousand years before the automatons for which the great illusionists became famous.’ Her voice was hushed in awe. ‘Von Kempelen’s chess-playing Turk, Frederick Ireland’s bicycling Enigmarelle, John Nevil Maskelyne’s Psycho. Mechanical masterpieces that I yearned to surpass. Now I’ve created a murderous machine that I can bring to life.’

  She cleared her throat. ‘Come, Apega. Jacob Flint seeks to pay tribute to you. He is a born romantic. Please rehearse how you will give yourself to each other.’

  Hypnotised by sheer horror, Jacob heard the clank of unseen cogs and wheels. Apega slowly stretched out long arms, and then both jointed legs. Stepping down from the dais, the automaton began to walk forward. Its movements were stiff and jerky but purposeful. The arms reaching out for him were studded with blades. If Apega seized him, his flesh would be ripped to shreds.

  ‘Later, when her audience arrives, she will take you in her arms, and…’

  Jacob stared into the blank eyes of the automaton. ‘Sara, please.’

  Sara snapped her fingers. ‘Wait, Apega. The time has not yet come.’

  The automaton kept moving. Stride by stride, it drew closer.

  ‘Stop, Apega!’ Sara cried. ‘Didn’t you hear me? It’s too soon. Stop at once!’

  The automaton continued its advance. In its awkward, noisy way, it was heading straight for Jacob. He felt Gaudino tense by his side, and tighten his hold on Jacob’s arm. Something was wrong. The illusion wasn’t working. Or else it was working too well. Sara was no longer in control. The torture machine had developed a mind of its own.

  ‘Stop!’ Sara took a step back. ‘Don’t move another inch.’

  Apega kept on moving.

  ‘Smettere proprio ora!’ Gaudino shouted.

  The manservant released his grip, and Jacob stumbled against a leather armchair. As he fought to keep his balance, the automaton drew closer. Its arms were reaching out for him.

  Sara took the pistol out of her bag and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened.

  ‘Maurizio!’ she screamed. ‘Stop her!’

  Gaudino lifted the switchblade. The automaton changed direction, as if it had taken notice. With a step to the right, Apega set a new course straight towards Sara Delamere.

  ‘Stop!’

  Gaudino rushed forward, brandishing the switchblade, interposing his body between Apega and his mistress. The automaton lifted an arm and swiped the knife from his hand. Its blades sliced his sleeve, and he screamed in pain. Jacob saw a dark stain spread across the ruined cotton.

  ‘Mei, enough!’ Sara cried.

  Sara hesitated for a moment before kicking off her shoes, and stumbling in the direction of the steel door at the rear of the room. The automaton lumbered after her. The door in the left hand wall was flung open, and Trueman stepped into the room.

  Trueman was holding a revolver. Firing across the room, he hit one of the bottles in the rack on the opposite wall. Glass shattered, fragments flying like shrapnel. Red wine sprayed out onto the pale carpet.

  ‘Next time,’ he said, ‘I shoot at the heart.’

  Gaudino sank to the floor, clutching his torn arm, as the automaton halted in mid-stride.

  ‘Mei!’ Sara’s face was white. ‘How could you?’

  The door on the right opened. Jacob caught his breath. The tiny Chinese woman appeared. She was clutching a pair of wire cutters.

  Sara gazed at her in disbelief. ‘Mei! What are you…?’

  Her eyes switched back to Apega the automaton. The machine was jerking about as if trying to flex its muscles. As Mei cut his bonds, Jacob heard the screech of a metal plate sliding open. Apega was disgorging her secret.

  Barefoot and wearing only a white cotton vest and shorts, Rachel Savernake squeezed out of the back of the machine. Her hair was in disarray, and her cheeks were flushed with exertion. Breathlessly, she hummed a ditty. Jacob recognised the refrain of ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’’.

  ‘The report of my death was exaggerated,’ she said. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Sara. That’s the trouble with illusions. They dissolve in the face of reality.’

  *

  Sara opened her mouth as if to speak, but no words came. For fully fifteen seconds, the two women and the two men were motionless, a tableau of daring and defeat. Mei’s cutters snapped away at the wire. J
acob had been tied so tightly that he’d almost lost the sensation in his hands and feet. Every other part of his body hurt.

  Sara put her head down, and raced for the open door. Trueman lifted his gun, and fired a warning shot which pulverised a second bottle of wine. Jacob dodged out of the way of the flying glass, but Sara fled from the room.

  ‘Keep an eye on our friend,’ Rachel said to Trueman, gesturing to Gaudino. Mei raised the wire cutters, but Rachel shook her head. ‘Only as a last resort.’

  Jacob rubbed his sore wrists. ‘We can’t let her get away!’

  ‘Follow me.’

  Rachel loped across the room, and through the door. Hobbling after her, Jacob found himself entering another brick-walled tunnel. He saw two short flights of steps. One led up to a padlocked wooden door. At the bottom of the other was the dark opening of a well. This tunnel, like the one from Carey Street, curved so that he couldn’t guess where it went, but it was low and narrow, and smelled foul. Rachel strode forward, and disappeared out of sight.

  He limped after her, choking as he inhaled the foetid air. After the bend, the tunnel straightened, and he heard Sara gasp as the rocky ground cut into her feet. Rachel was five yards ahead of him, breathing noisily. She was finding it hard to keep her balance. He heard her stifle a cry. The jagged stones were tearing her bare soles.

  Fifty yards further on, she halted at a point where the tunnel opened out into a large circular space. When he caught up with her, they clutched each other’s arms for support. Her thin, wiry frame shuddered with exhaustion. She’d been cramped up inside Apega, and he sensed her strength was ebbing.

  Ahead, the tunnel split into two. One route ended in a round chamber full of strange impedimenta: spiked metal hoods and bridles, elaborate wooden contraptions with pulleys, and a large wire cage. Rachel caught his horrified expression.

  ‘A torturer’s store room,’ she panted. ‘Indispensable for an orgy of cruelty.’

  He stared down the other limb of the tunnel. The way narrowed, and the stink wafting from it nauseated him.

  ‘A tributary of the sewers,’ Rachel said. ‘She can never escape.’

  Linking arms, they stumbled forward. They were moving deeper underground, as the tunnel burrowed down into the earth’s bowels. There were no more electric lamps, and scarcely enough light for them to see Sara.

  She still wore the Widow Bianchi’s finery, and the flowing gown kept getting in the way. Her body bent into a crouch as she inched along a ledge the width of a single brick. Jacob realised that the ledge was actually the top of a high wall. This was a barricade designed to dam a sewer, a conduit culminating in a junction with the main tunnel. At the far end of the wall was a dark opening in the earth. Jacob could not see what lay beyond.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he whispered.

  ‘The Fleet sewers form a rank labyrinth. You need gum­boots and an iron stomach to manage more than a few paces. Watch what happens.’

  Sara slipped, and put out a hand to steady herself against the tunnel wall. She teetered to the left, countering the risk of falling to the right, into the depths of the sewer.

  Jacob held his breath. Now the woman who had meant to kill him was risking her own life.

  ‘And she said you had suicidal tendencies,’ he breathed.

  Rachel grunted. ‘Like so many would-be leaders, she has devoted her life to wishful thinking.’

  The stench was overpowering. Jacob felt sick, but could not keep his eyes off Sara. She concentrated as if walking a tightrope. The ledge was damp and treacherous. With each step, she paused, sucking more of the toxic air into her lungs. Jacob was conscious of Rachel beside him, and the warmth of her wiry and skimpily clad body in the cold dank air. Their bodies touched.

  ‘Any moment now,’ she whispered.

  Sara caught her foot in the folds of her gown, and lost her balance. Bare feet skidding, she fell head-first, screaming and clawing at air as she plunged into the sewer. With a thud, she hit the mound of rottenness.

  Grasping Jacob’s hand, Rachel edged forward. Step by step, they reached the brick ledge. Below they could see the lumpy mass of waste in the sewer, bubbling, reeking and deadly as quicksand. The drop was ten feet, and Sara had landed head-first. The gown billowed on the surface of the frothy, smothering waste. Her wig had fallen off into a rocky crevice. Of Sara’s loveliness, there was no sign. Nothing but the gurgling sludge of London’s bowels.

  Jacob turned away, and retched. Even the cauldron of boiling fat Sara had spoken of would have granted a death both quicker and less vile.

  Juliet Brentano’s Journal

  6 February 1921

  Another year gone. We live so quietly here, the Judge, Henrietta, Cliff, Martha, and me. Hardly anyone disturbs us, and we disturb no one. Every now and then, old Hannaway writes to the Judge, a brief note proposing a visit to Gaunt and enclosing a longer note written in some form of cipher.

  The Judge never sees the letters. I respond on his behalf, explaining that he remains indisposed.

  Caution is essential. Yet nobody has exposed me. With every day that passes, my confidence grows. The Judge’s mental state is so fragile that even if he told the truth, nobody would believe him. As for Harold Brown, he won’t show his face again. Not after what he did to poor Martha.

  On Gaunt, I’m never at a loss for something to do, or a new skill to learn. That is why I’ve neglected this journal. My quest will take years, but I mean to use them well.

  I’ve ransacked my memories of my childhood for clues, but the pictures in my mind are as faded as old sepia photographs. We lived in King’s Cross, and although we didn’t have much money, there was enough to get by. My father didn’t live with us, and his visits were special treats. He was tall, handsome, and well-spoken, and I was in awe of him. My parents weren’t married, and the boy who lived next door once teased me about that. He never made the same mistake again.

  As a child, I was happier to run wild in the streets than to wear pretty dresses or play with dolls. But then I started coughing and losing weight. Just before the war broke out, a doctor said I was suffering from consumption. My father enlisted, and came to kiss me goodbye. He said he’d arranged for my mother and me to stay at Savernake Hall with his ailing uncle. I could recover in peace and quiet, Father said.

  Rachel never hid her contempt for us. My mother she hated because the Judge seemed to have some affection for her. To this day, I don’t know how many sacrifices Mother made to keep me from harm.

  Over time, I regained my strength. I would sneak out of the Hall, and go running along the shoreline, swimming in the sound, climbing the rocky outcrops. Rachel did none of that. Perhaps her laziness explains her swift surrender to the influenza.

  What I do know is that the impersonation is a success. I embarked on it recklessly, without caring about the future. From that moment on, Cliff, Henrietta, and Martha have been my partners in crime,

  The truth is that I enjoy being Rachel Savernake, and imposing my tastes on her life. A girl whose reading was limited to cheap novelettes is now seldom found without her nose in a book. A girl who found learning was a chore is now determined to discover as much as possible about the world beyond Gaunt, so that she can take her place in it when the time comes.

  Since the Judge had his stroke, there is no hope of extracting meaningful clues to what happened to my parents. He’s ruined physically and mentally. Cliff’s profoundly deaf cousin, an elderly woman named Bertha, acts as his nurse.

  We make up a strange household, a handful of people rattling around in a vast old house. We’ve closed half the building, to make it easier to look after. But I have kept exploring those silent, musty rooms, knowing that somewhere in Savernake Hall lies the secret of my parents’ fate.

  Last week came the breakthrough. After endless searching, I discovered a secret cupboard in the wall of the Judge’s study. It overflows with documents written in the same sort of cipher as the lawyer’s notes. Among them is a copy of his last will and
testament. The original is held by Hannaway. At least it is written in English, if legal gobbledegook counts as English.

  In short, the Judge leaves almost everything to his beloved daughter, Rachel Savernake. She inherits on her twenty-fifth birthday. There are modest legacies to each person who is in his employment at the date of his death. In the event of his daughter’s death before the age of twenty-five, the whole estate goes to the Gambit Club, of which, the will says, the Judge was ‘proud to be a founding member and first President’.

  The address given for the Gambit Club is that of Hannaway’s legal practice. Gaunt Chambers in Gallows Court, Lincoln’s Inn. The Judge practised there as a barrister. In his prime, he enjoyed playing chess. I mean to ensure that the Gambit Club never receives a penny from the estate.

  From my research in the Judge’s law books, it is clear that his dying in the near future would do me no good. Hannaway would control the trust imposed by the will. A new will, worded more liberally, and providing that I inherit on attaining my majority, would improve matters. Cliff, by instinct a man of action, thought it worth trying. Reluctantly, I’ve decided that the risk of forgery, or of trying to persuade the Judge to make the change, is too great. So much could go wrong. I mustn’t draw attention to myself, or to arouse Hannaway’s suspicions in any way. We must keep the Judge alive until I can inherit.

  After that…

  One day, I shall go to Gallows Court.

  As for Cliff and Henrietta, my steadfast friends, I have the happiest news. They are to be married in April, in a quiet ceremony. Henrietta will become Mrs Trueman. And Martha and I shall be their bridesmaids.

  34

  ‘How much will you tell him?’ Clifford Trueman asked.

  ‘More than I should,’ Rachel said. ‘Less than he wants to know.’