by KW Jeter
“How happy I am then, to be able to provide some comfort to you!” My visitor’s smile became a veritable display of sunbeams, lacking only the singing of larks upon leafy branches. “All has been arranged, even as we speak. Permit me–” He stepped back from me to the door, drawing it open and gesturing for me to come and stand beside him. “Behold!”
I did as I was bidden, and viewed a surprising apparition. A carriage was present in the centre of the inn’s courtyard, bearing an oaken catafalque ornamented with ebony inlays and gilt curlicues about its corners. Strapped to this was that simpler wooden construction which I recognized as the casket holding my wife’s mortal remains. A pair of harnessed steeds, of a quality unavailable to be hired in any local stable, stamped the mud from their black-lacquered hooves.
“If I and my associates have erred,” said Rollingwood, “you have our apologies. But we anticipated that you, as the grieving widower, would have no objection to our plans – and we proceeded on that assumption. We were able to do so with some alacrity – as I told you, the Society has funds more than sufficient for its purposes; that which is accomplished slowly, and with foot-dragging delays in the ordinary course of business, is done at lightning speed when money greases the wheels.”
Of that, I had little doubt; I had witnessed as much in the course of my previous dealings with the grand conspirators of the world. Notions which men of lesser wealth would have taken years to bring to fruition, if at all, were by the wealthy sent headlong into our midst, like brakeless drays hurtling down steep inclines, with cries of Damn the consequences!
“If you are in accord with us,” continued Rollingwood, “there is nothing left to arrange here; all has been taken care of. We may depart immediately, with yourself and your late wife.”
I stood silent, musing upon this unexpected development. It presented a certain opportunity to me – namely, escape. If I had only been besieged by the mysteries presented by Miss McThane’s correspondence with that other – an enterprise that had previously been unknown to me – then I would have had little concern for my own safety. All that might have been at risk would be that tranquillity of mind of which I had precious little before. And the possibility had remained of leaving this puzzle unexamined, as with so many others that had confronted me, thereby preserving what sanity I had. In this world, wilful ignorance is often the wisest course.
But all that consideration had been set topsy-turvy by the introduction of violence to the scene. Shots had been fired from a shadowy assailant’s rifle; one had come near enough to send me scurrying away in fear for my life. Perhaps that had been the intent behind the bullet, to frighten me only – but perhaps the marksman had misjudged his aim in the night’s darkness, and failed in his more lethal ambition. If so, how likely was it that one who had set out to be a murderer would be satisfied to leave that ambition unfulfilled? The person might be skulking about nearby, rifle in hand, awaiting his opportunity – which he might have acted upon this very morning, if it had not been for the arrival of Rollingwood and his casket-laden entourage.
Perhaps an unusually kindly Providence had sent this representative of the Gravitas Maximus Funerary Society to my door, and thus given me the chance to flee from my present circumstances. While alone, I had been at the mercy of the stealthy marksman, only being able to hide myself here at the inn and await my assailant discovering some means of entry; when that occurred, my trusty iron poker would likely be of little avail. Were I to abandon the building and attempt to make my way to the village, either by day or under cover of night, I would be a relatively easy target.
But Rollingwood had presented me a means of exit, without his even being aware of my predicament. Unless the marksman was willing to engage in wholesale slaughter, of myself and Rollingwood and whatever associates had accompanied him here, their presence would secure my safety all the distance to London, by whatever route had been already arranged. And once in the distant capital? Whatever dangers might await me there – and I could easily imagine a great many – I would at least have whatever safety could be found in the mass of people, of whom there were even greater numbers. If my stalker followed, he would not be able to pursue me at his convenience, my being a quarry surrounded by an empty landscape; in addition, there were still officers of the law going about their duties in London, who would very likely impede his pursuit.
Another consideration came to mind: whatever mysteries in which I was engrossed, regarding the woman whose transfer from one grave to another would be the engine of my escape, I might well have more ability to unravel them there than here; having been more a habituée of that great metropolis, Miss McThane had left her former associates in its twisting alleys, not in any Cornish village. Would I be able to locate any of them, and interrogate them as to any knowledge they might possess, relevant to the mysterious correspondence I had been bequeathed? I had no idea, other than a reliance on the cynical old maxim, Bad pennies always turn up.
“Mr Rollingwood–” I drew myself from my circling calculations. “The case you make is persuasive. How soon would we be able to depart?”
His smile broadened. “Immediately, sir.”
“Very well.” I turned toward the stairs. “I need to pack a bag.”
* * *
Some few moments later – my habitual wardrobe is not so extensive, that its assembly for travel requires more than a small valise – I stood beside that bed, which I would never share again. Wide as a world, it had seemed, when another’s tender regard had encompassed me. It was not diminished in my memory by these recent revelations of domestic subterfuge.
Which did, however belatedly, prompt me to a duty I had already forestalled too long. So many injurious circumstances can overwhelm as we journey from point to point, or upon our arrival at what turns out to be an unfortunate destination, that it would have been remiss of me not to have put at least my mental affairs in order, as best I could, before departing these premises.
Thinking thus, I reached inside my jacket and drew out the letter which had been so eerily delivered to me. Unfolding the single torn sheet contained within the waxen envelope, I cast my gaze upon it–
No need to peruse all the words contained therein, for its most dreaded confirmation to be lain upon my heart and thoughts. Seeing clearly no more than the bold-scrawled signature at the bottom – and that affording not surprise, but rather confirmed suspicion – I folded the letter back up and deposited it from where it had just been extracted.
“So, Mr Scape…” I murmured a greeting to my late wife’s correspondent, as though he were standing now before me, with the same wicked, knowing smile that I recalled from before. “You are a durable fellow. How it has come about, I do not know – but you yet live.”
The import of that, I did not know. Perhaps whatever interest he took in my affairs had come to an end, at the moment of Miss McThane breathing her last…
I could only hope.
Latching my bag, I lifted it from the bed and headed downstairs with it, to the coach and whatever else awaited me.
Part II
Again, the Urbane Mr Dower
FIVE
Another Funeral, With Worse Prospects
“I confess – if you will allow me – that I expected something rather different.”
“Your pardon, Mr Dower–” Rollingwood turned his inevitably sympathetic gaze toward me. “But I am not quite sure I follow your meaning.”
At the time of this exchange, he and I were standing in the midst of the cemetery at Highgate, or rather what it had become since last I had seen it – a considerable span of years intervened since that time, predating the unfortunate introduction of the Moloch-like force of Steam upon the city of London. The idle curiosity of a young man – I strain to recall how I had felt in those innocent days – was all that ever brought me to these sombre environs; I shared that popular fancy for strolling about this notable graveyard’s Egyptian Avenue and Circle of Lebanon, admiring the ornate tombs and mausoleum
s, the permanent residents of which were sadly unable to appreciate. A pleasure it was then, on a summer day, to espy the occasional fox slinking through the rampant park-like foliage, the bright coat of the animal seeming to stake the claim of Life upon the precincts of the dead, and irrepressible Nature at the limits of the sterile city. But the changes that had occurred since then – the Future once more become Today – oppressed my heart again, as they had before. Time’s passage had not inured my sensibilities to malignant Change.
Granted, I had not been in the best of temper before I had accompanied Rollingwood and the other associates of the Gravitas Maximus Funerary Society to Highgate. On the previous occasion on which I had travelled from the wastes of Cornwall to London – not that many years ago, and prompted by other concerns and conspiracies – the vast interconnecting web of rail transport had not yet reached my point of departure, an indication of how remote and insignificant it was; thus, I completed the greatest extent of the journey by means of hired carriage, as would have been done by those we like to think of as our primitive and benighted ancestors. Now that system was complete, yet still expanding like some veinous growth; soon the day would come, if not already arrived, in which the privilege of being in any way disconnected from the rest of Humanity would be reserved only for the wealthy, who can purchase with their riches the isolation and quiet denied to us mere rabble.
(Though I fear worse awaits our descendants; that conniver Scape had professed an ability to see far to the Future, aided by another of my father’s devices. He had described to me an age to come, in which all members of society walk about with little flat boxes in their hands, to which they bend their unceasing attention so as to never be without the image of another’s face in their own, and another’s constant yammering voice in their ears, scouring away whatever private thoughts they might otherwise have been forced to attend to. Scape himself had not been keen on this distant prospect; he had once cynically commented to me that the devices seemed to possess the almost magical power of transforming grown men into chattering adolescent girls.)
What greater comfort I experienced, and the degree to which the journey was more quickly accomplished upon the iron tracks laid across the nation, was obviated by the view from the train compartment’s window, as Rollingwood and I sat facing each other in the narrow space. That which I had glimpsed years before, and even had been able to inspect at closer range when the carriage had stopped upon the road to London, had been transformed from its first encroachment – which had been appalling enough – to its complete fulfilment, utterly oppressing my soul. England’s once-verdant fields, divided only by hedge and brook as far as the eye could see, were now overlain with a vast net of pipes and tubes, interconnecting with and branching off from each other; some were no greater in diameter than the span of one’s hand, others were of terrifying girth, fully capable of swallowing anaconda-like the train in which I sat.
“You seem a bit ill at ease, Mr Dower.” Ever the soul of sympathy, Rollingwood had leaned forward, peering with concern at my face. “Shall I open the window a bit–” He pointed beside us. “To allow some fresh air to enter?”
“God, no.” That had been my response; I even reached forward to stay his hand. “As stifling as it might be in here, I fail to see how conditions would be improved by exposing ourselves to those outside. We seem to be passing through the humid climate of those jungles that afflicted Livingstone as he searched for the sources of the Nile.”
My comment was prompted by the vapours that condensed upon the exterior of the glass, only slightly dissipated by the rapid passage of the train, and the billowing clouds blurrily visible beyond. The pressures contained within the snaking pipes were such that rents and tears in their bolted construction were constantly being exposed, allowing jets of steam to issue forth. What human figures could be discerned in the overheated landscape, where once yeoman farmers had tilled the earth, were engaged in the sweltering labour of maintaining the pipes and tubes as best they could; stripped to the waist, their sweating backs and shoulders reddened as though boiled, they seemed but dwarves to the monstrous forms they served.
I should have expected similar transformations, upon our arrival in London. Once Miss McThane’s coffin, nailed up in its shipping crate, had been unfreighted by the labourers in the employ of the Gravitas Maximus Funerary Society, our party immediately had set out for Highgate. The journey from the centre of the city to what had been its outskirts had afforded me a similarly depressing view of the changes wrought by Steam, our new master. The London I had last seen but a pair of years ago had suffered enough by the advent of this technological regime, even before calamitous ruination had been visited upon it – or so I had believed then. But those stifling alterations had been but the vanguard of the greater ones that had now come. Steam still had been an invader then, however imminent its triumph; the outlines of what had been, the city built by Wren and Barry and the historic others, were still visible through the roiling mists and past the fiery pipes laid through the streets. But now it was a conqueror, secure in its dominion; little of the world I had known, when I stood inside my Clerkenwell watch shop and scanned through its bowed window, hoping desperately for custom, now could be seen unobscured. All damage from fire and destruction, that might have served as a useful admonishment against foolish enthusiasms, had been repaired more quickly than I would have imagined possible. The Future had now arrived complete, in all its crushing might.
“I mean, Mr Rollingwood, that I expected some respite from modernity – here, of all places.” Such were my thoughts, now that I stood within the beloved cemetery’s precincts. “Is there no reverence left anywhere, any regard for the Past and our departed?”
“Ah.” My companion gave a slow nod. “I confess some familiarity with the sights that you now behold – our Society has been busy of late, conducting memorials here. I have become such a frequent visitor to Highgate, that its present appearance is one to which I am now thoroughly accustomed.”
“More pity for you, then.” With my garments already sodden with my own perspiration, I gazed about the grave-studded scenery, once an image of tranquil solemnity, now a riot of overgrown foliage. “I often think that we do not accustom ourselves to anything; we merely devolve to a state in which we no longer notice how thoroughly rotten things have become.”
“Perhaps so.” Rollingwood indulged me with his patient smile. “I won’t dispute you. Suffice it to say I’m somewhat relieved that your response to these surroundings is more – shall we say? – choleric rather than morbid.”
“What meaning is that remark intended to convey?”
“Very little, in the event. Only that I had been advised, by those with some prior knowledge regarding yourself, that there have been occasions in the past when your vital spirits had drawn to such a low ebb, that putting an end to your sorrows – by your own hand – had been contemplated. If being in a place such as this had prompted your taking such final action, I should be prepared to intervene, to the degree I would be able.”
“Your gossiping sources should mind their own damned business.” As so often before, I was nettled by others’ presumptuous interest in my affairs. “Rest assured, that however much I entertain passing fancies – just as other men do – that particular one is in abeyance for the moment.”
“I am gladdened to hear.”
“And more importantly – why is it so infernally hot?” I again mopped my brow with a handkerchief that I could have wrung out like a dish-rag. “I would swear that the temperature is greater here than down in the city proper.”
“The reason for that phenomenon is simple,” explained Rollingwood. “Some time ago, a great entrepreneurial project had been undertaken, by which a system of boilers – immense apparatuses, larger than any ever before constructed – were sunk below the earth on which we stand.” With a stamp of his foot, Rollingwood indicated the location of which he spoke. “The intent was to provide London with even more copious amounts o
f that steam power which it demands.”
“As if it were needed,” I observed sourly. “I would have thought it had plenty enough.”
“The appetite is seemingly insatiable. Alas, the enterprise foundered; its authors were too ambitious, attempting too much – and too hasty, precautioning too little. A fiery subterranean explosion was the result, not breaching the earth’s surface like a new Vesuvius, but confined to the vaulted chambers beneath us. Nearly all of the labourers tending the furnaces were instantly consumed, and the company had some difficulty in securing replacements for them.”
“How unsporting of our lower classes, to be so reluctant to have themselves turned to ash.”
“Indeed.” Rollingwood seemed oblivious to my sarcasm. “Such selfish attitudes only impede progress. The upshot in this case being that the buried furnaces roar on, burning the fuel that had been stockpiled for their operation. Unattended, the vertical apertures providing the air necessary for combustion have shattered from neglect, permitting the heat and vapours to escape directly here – thus, the elevated temperatures that you have noted.”
Indeed, other changes than that had come to my attention. The sultry climate contained within the cemetery’s walls, the constant radiation welling up from the earth itself and the humid clouds roiling just above my head, had resulted in a consequent transformation to the foliage. No longer did Highgate represent an English park, verdant but well-tempered; Nature had run wild here, spurred by the tropical climate that had been created. The ground and every stone, every tree trunk, was carpeted with spongy lichens, so thick and grotesquely coloured as to resemble an Arab rug merchant’s wares, overlapping in such profusion as to dazzle an adventurer’s eye. Riots of vines tangled in the branches overhead, looping about each other in serpentine congress. The modest and well-trimmed underbrush between the tombs had been usurped by botanical monstrosities, with pendulous shield-like leaves as broad as the ears of elephants, shiny as though their dark-green tint had been lacquered upon them, water dripping from the lowest points.
