The Pierced Heart: A Novel

by Shepherd, Lynn

  “We have to go after ’im, sir,” concludes Sam. “This Von Reisenberg—’e already ’as nearly ’alf a day’s start on us.”

  “Well, in that case, Wheeler, he’ll have been on the boat-train hours ago, and bound for the Continent long before we can apprehend him.”

  “Not necessarily, sir,” says Charles. “The steward at the Albany said he asked about the steamers, but not about the trains. If he has a young woman with him, he may not want to run the risk of going by railway. He’ll want privacy—”

  “Which means ’e could be going by road,” interrupts Sam. “We could still catch ’im at Folkestone, if we take the boat-train. There’s one that goes on the hour. That gives us forty minutes—we could still catch it.”

  Rowlandson sighs. “Very well. What you found in those apartments is enough cause for an arrest. But you wire me from Folkestone before proceeding to the Continent, Wheeler—do I make myself clear? I do not want to run the risk of a diplomatic incident, and certainly not with the damn French.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “In the meantime I will have a search made of the area about the Albany. We may yet be able to find that child; let us hope what we do not find is the headless corpse of the unfortunate Miss Causton. I will also wire to Whitby. But I will be most surprised if the local constabulary can assist us in any meaningful respect. They no doubt dismissed the whole episode as a malicious prank.”

  “And O’Riordan, sir?” asks Charles. “What did he have to say?”

  Rowlandson’s brow sets. “That scoundrel? He claimed he never spoke to that ‘source’ of his. Says an envelope was left for him at the Daily News. No name, no address.”

  “And did he show the letter to you?” asks Charles. “Do you have it?”

  “No, Maddox, I do not. He claims he burned it. Needless to say I have no intention of leaving the matter there, but you will have to leave that aspect of the investigation to me, for I need you to accompany Wheeler here. You have met this Von Reisenberg—you know what he looks like, and how he is likely to behave. Your expenses will be reimbursed, you need have no fear of that.”

  Downstairs, Sam sends a constable out onto the street to hail a hansom, and then they return to Causton, who rises from his chair at once at the sight of them.

  “We have very little time, Mr Causton,” says Charles, “we will be setting off in a few moments—”

  “You go in pursuit of him? Let me come with you—please—”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible, sir,” says Sam quickly. “But you can rest assured—”

  But before he can even finish Causton is upon him, clutching him by the arms, his fingers digging into his flesh. “You don’t understand—you must let me come with you—she is my daughter—”

  “There’s no need for that, sir,” intervenes Charles, pushing himself between them in some alarm. “You can trust us to do our duty—”

  “But don’t you see?” cries Causton, his eyes wild. “Finding her is my duty—I must go with you—how else will I—how else—”

  And then just as suddenly as his anger flared he has turned away, and they watch as his body is racked with sobs.

  Charles goes towards him and places a hand on his shoulder. “Mr Causton, I am not, as you perhaps believe, a police officer. I was once, but now I function in a personal capacity, offering my services as what you might call a ‘private’ detective. If you wish, I can do the same in this case—pursue this man on your behalf and attempt to retrieve your daughter and bring her home. My duty, in that case, would be first and foremost to you.”

  Causton turns, wiping his eyes. “I would pay anything—sacrifice anything—”

  Charles takes his notebook from his pocket, scribbles a few words, and then tears away the sheet. “There is no time now, but if you go to this address my uncle will tell you anything more you require to know. And if you need to communicate with me, you may do so through him. I will send a message to him now to tell him about your case, and I will ensure that he is kept apprised of my whereabouts.”

  Causton takes the paper like a rope thrown to a drowning man. He tries to speak but his emotion wells over and he turns away. Charles touches him lightly once more on the shoulder, and then he and Sam are gone.

  Within half an hour their hansom is pulling up at London Bridge station; Sam goes for the tickets and Charles makes his way to a platform billowing with gritty smoke and thronged with passengers for the Folkestone train. Businessmen, families, farmers, labourers, clerks; but no-one even remotely resembling the Baron Von Reisenberg.

  “Looks like you might be right,” says Sam, coming up to him and tucking their tickets into his top pocket. “There was only one ovver train this mornin’, and the inspector claims ’e didn’t see anyone resemblin’ this Baron of yours. So looks like ’e could well ’ave gone by road, like you said. Vine Street are wirin’ to the ’arbour office, asking ’em to detain anyone answerin’ ’is description. Wiv a bit o’ luck we’ll get there before ’e does.”

  “I hope you’re right, Sam,” replies Charles grimly. “I hope you’re right.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Lucy’s journal

  I WAS TOO weak to walk and so he carried me. Down the stairs and out into the air. The air! Even the dirty atmosphere of the city was scented nectar to me after all those days confined. But the gas-lamps by the door struck my weak eyes like suns and I had to cover my face and look away. The real sun was only barely lightening the sky, and yet the world had the freshness of early morning, so I adjudged it to be the glow of sunrise, not of twilight. The courtyard was empty of all but the carriage, and I saw at once it was the same one we had travelled in on our way here, the same hooded and silent driver, the same trunks piled by the horses. The man was lifting in small wooden chests that clinked as if containing glass, and when I lifted my gaze I saw that strapped to the roof was that long box I had seen delivered so many weeks before, but I knew now what it contained. I looked around wildly, hoping to see a servant, a tradesman, a passer-by, but all was deserted. He felt my body stiffen in his arms, and his grip tightened as he nodded to the coachman to open the carriage, and I heard him laugh as I struggled, putting out my hands to grip the door, but too feeble to do anything but vex him. He stowed me on the seat, wrapping blankets about me, but less for warmth than to hamper my movements and render me immobile. Then he pulled down the blind and locked the door, and his footsteps retreated across the paving-stones. I strained my ears, thinking I discerned voices, but I cannot be sure if my hearing deceived me. A few moments later I felt the carriage dip and sway as the driver climbed up onto the box, and then the door opened once more and he entered, tapping the ceiling with his cane to signal for departure.

  I sat with my face against the window, feeling the jarring of every cobblestone, listening for some sound that might tell me where we were, or where we might be going, but I heard little beyond the sounds of a city waking. The trundling of carts, the scrape of the crossing-sweepers’ brooms, and here and there the sound of voices. Common people, such as would be heading to work at such an early hour. And soon even those sounds faded and the carriage picked up speed. If it was London I had been sequestered in, we were leaving it now. All this while he had spoken not a word, and though I would not look at him I was aware, every moment, of his presence, and could not rid my nostrils of his smell. I think I must have slept then, lulled by the motion of the carriage, for I became suddenly conscious that the motion had ceased. I heard voices again outside and turned to see his eyes upon me, staring into mine, warning me against any movement, any sound. As my senses sharpened I could hear about us the noise of an inn yard—horses’ hooves, the shouts of ostlers, the roll of wheels. Then the carriage door opened and the coachman passed in a plate of food and a flask. He refused to partake of them, handing the provisions instead to me. I hesitated a moment, remembering how I had been convinced he was drugging me, but I could not see how he could have doctored this food, and I to
ok up the bread and butter like a creature half-starved. As indeed I truly was—no food had ever tasted so flavoursome to me, no milk so sweet. He watched me as I ate, an expression of revulsion on his cold features, as a man might look who was compelled to watch others feasting on human flesh. I felt stronger at once, and so far emboldened that I asked if I might use the privy. His eyes narrowed, but after a moment he nodded. He got out of the carriage and I heard him speaking to someone in the yard, and then he returned to the door and handed me a pair of spectacles such as I had never seen before. They were mounted on thin wire but the lenses within them were dark, almost to blackness, and a piece of glass extended round to the side of the eye, so that scarcely any light could enter. He told me to put them on, and let down my veil, and then he handed me down.

  He kept my arm tight through his as we walked, and I thought every eye must be upon us, but though I glimpsed hazily through the glass three stable-lads in aprons, smoking by the water-pump, and two serving girls emptying slops, none of them seemed to remark our presence as he led me quickly to a lean-to behind the inn. He stood outside as I went in. I bled still, but less heavily, and I was able eventually to clean and neaten myself, though my hands and legs trembled. I must have taken longer than he wished, for soon he pounded upon the door, telling me we must depart. I rose to my feet, feeling at once a rushing in my ears and that strange taste of metal in my mouth that has always, before, been a herald of affliction. I stumbled to keep up with him as we returned to the carriage and he closed the door upon us once more. And now I slept indeed, pitching almost at once into a plunge of darkness. I saw my father weeping, only it was not the countenance I knew and loved but some terrifying aged visage, his features withered by grief. And then the picture shifted like one seen underwater and he it was I saw, he it was who stared back at me, unblinking, unmoving. And then the dream dissolved once more and I was swept, desperate and terrified, into the nightmare, ringed about by the glare of dancing lights, my face pawed by hands reaching down, and always the music, the music, the incessant repetitive music—

  Do not leave me—

  “I have no intention of doing so. Of that you may be sure.”

  I thought for an icy moment that I dreamed yet, for the music still remained, but when I opened my eyes I realized that it was his voice I had heard, and that I must have spoken aloud in my dream. But the music had not ceased, jangling tinnily on and on, and I looked around in panic, only to find him looking at me with a contemptuous disdain. “It is nothing but a barrel-organ. Rather incompetently played. Please try to control yourself.”

  “Where are we?” I asked, struggling up in my seat. How long had we been travelling?

  He chose not to answer me, but as the music passed by and faded I heard the squall of gulls and knew we were nearing the sea.

  “Are we at Whitby?” I cried, with a surge of absurd joy. “Are you taking me home?”

  But he did not reply, and then I sensed that the carriage was descending a slope and I heard the sound of a train’s whistle and the rattle of railway lines, and knew it could not be the place I longed to see. Suddenly the carriage gathered pace and we seemed to career along at a gallop until we came finally to a halt. The driver leapt down and opened the door. We were on a quayside, and I could see a steamer moored a few yards ahead, with black smoke issuing from its metal chimney. The horn blew and I saw men on the dockside shouting and running towards us.

  “Your veil and glasses if you please,” he said quickly, making haste to step down. “There is no time to lose.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  BRITAIN DOES NOT BOAST a faster form of transport than the train Charles is now travelling on, but it is, all the same, not nearly fast enough. As the downs and fields and market towns roll away past the window, Sam watches as his friend checks his pocket-watch every fifteen minutes, willing the miles to pass.

  “We’ll be there not long after two,” he offers once, “there’s no way ’e can get there quicker ’an that,” but Charles scarcely seems to hear, and they lapse into an uncomfortable, fretful silence that lasts until the train leaves the last junction and begins the short descent into Folkestone, over the viaduct and the swing bridge to the station hard by the sea wall. News of their arrival has gone before them, and an anxious official of the South-Eastern Railway Company is awaiting them on the platform, clutching the message telegraphed from Vine Street.

  “Clarence Watkins, station manager, at your service,” he says, shaking their hands as the passengers push past them. He has an almost unpleasantly jovial manner, his face pulled into a rictus of grinning insincerity. “I am here to assist you, gentlemen. You may rely upon my diligence, and my discretion. I hope I may trust to the same.”

  He shoots a glance around him at this, and Charles can understand why. The station is thronged with people, waiting for trains, meeting trains, disembarking from trains. The last thing this man—or his employer—wants is any public unpleasantness.

  Sam has clearly divined his apprehension. “We’re not out for makin’ a scene, Mr Watkins. Just doin’ our job. Jus’ like you.”

  Watkins nods and leads them towards the harbourside. The sea glitters in the sun, and the gulls dip and lift, calling and circling; Charles can see families promenading farther along the beach, children running on the sand, and parasols a-flutter in the breeze off the water.

  “The steamers depart from here,” Watkins tells them. “The next one is at three, the one thereafter at five o’ clock. If the man you seek travelled by road from London this morning he will be lucky to make the next crossing. You may wait in the office here, if you wish—it will ensure that he is not forewarned of your presence, and you run no risk of missing him thereby, as all passengers have to present their passports here before they are permitted to board.”

  Moreover—as Watkins has quite clearly already concluded—such an expedient will also serve to keep them discreetly unseen by the steam-packet’s clientele.

  “Very well,” says Sam. “And if one o’ your lads could rustle us up some lunch then we’d be most appreciative.”

  Watkins opens the office door. “I will see what can be obtained,” he says, without any great enthusiasm, and then the two of them are left alone. A pimply young man arrives soon after with two pies and a pitcher of beer, swiftly followed by the Foreign Office agent, who raises the blind at the window with a snap and declares the office open for business. Sam wipes his mouth on his sleeve and takes up a position immediately behind the man’s chair, and Charles watches as the customers for the three o’clock passage begin to assemble.

  And it is as fine a cross section of British society as you could hope to find—pompous paterfamilias, sailor-suited children dragged by small dogs, parties of pupils shepherded by schoolmasters, nervous new travellers clutching packets of dry biscuits to ward off mal de mer, a gaggle—or giggle—of chic young women bedecked for the boulevards, and an exotic creature dressed in bright moth-like silks who can only be destined for the Comédie-Française. But of the Baron, there is no sign. They wait, all the same, and just as smoke begins to belch blackly from the chimney, one of the sailors on the quayside gives a cry and points up towards the bridge. A carriage appears on the viaduct, racing at full speed, and Charles throws open the office door, heedless now of being seen, concerned only to catch him—catch him and save her, if she yet lives. He races onto the quay, where sailors are calling to those in the coach, shouting that they have only a few moments to spare, and then a man in a tall hat is stepping quickly down from the carriage to the quay and Charles is running—hearing Sam’s voice behind him but taking no heed—running towards that carriage and throwing open the door—

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  FIFTEEN MINUTES PAST THREE. It is quiet in Buckingham Street. In the drawing-room, the French clock ticks, and Maddox sits in his accustomed chair. There is a large leather-bound book on his knee, which he is affecting to read, but more than half of his attention is being lured away by Betsy, Nanc
y’s little daughter, who sits cross-legged on the sill at the open window, one small arm about the cat, pointing out people in the street to him as they pass by. Thunder is, as Maddox well knows, more than able to fend for himself, but the little girl lacks his sense of self-preservation—or at the very least his perfect sense of balance—and more than once the old man has had to issue a stern warning about leaning out too far. It sounds stern, at any rate, but there is a special quality in his voice that renders his watchful love perceptible even to the child. The little girl’s voice chatters on, more voluble with the cat than she ever is with the human inmates of this house—“that’s Mrs Shoap, she’s nice but she has two big dogs so you won’t like them, and that’s the muffin man, I call him Joey but I don’t know if that’s his real name”—until it is broken, suddenly and unexpectedly, by the peal of the doorbell downstairs. Betsy must be becoming bored with her monologue, because she immediately jumps up and races off downstairs. The cat, suitably unfazed, stretches unhurriedly, scratches behind one ear, then leaps lightly down and disappears through the door.

  Maddox returns to his book, hearing, on the edge of his mind, the sounds of voices downstairs. One is Abel Stornaway’s—slow, Scottish, wary—but the other he does not recognise. What he can discern, however, is the agitation in the man’s words. And so it does not surprise him that the door soon opens, and Abel appears around it.

  “A Mr Causton to see ’ee, guv. Says young Mr Charles told ’ee what it’s about?”

  Maddox looks up from his book. “He did. By all means, show him in.”