Constable & Toop

by Gareth P. Jones

  Her motivation did not come from a desire to impact the physical world. Emily simply wanted to play with the most magnificent toy she had ever laid her eyes on. Only when Clara began to watch intently did she consider that she could use the theatre to communicate with her. Clara sat patiently for hours waiting for Emily to perfect her performance. Emily came to worry that she was taking too long and that Clara would lose interest, but eventually she got it right.

  Her play opened when she pushed out onto the stage a little girl dressed in rags. Emily wasn’t to know she had picked Cinderella to play the part of herself.

  ‘This is you?’ said Clara, instantly understanding.

  Ever so delicately, Emily reached her other hand into the theatre and tapped the back of the paper character’s head, making Cinderella nod in answer to the question.

  ‘You’re the poor girl from the kitchen.’

  Another nod.

  ‘Do you know who did it?’

  Emily shook the character’s head to indicate No.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Clara.

  Emily had never laid eyes on her murderer, but she’d found the figure she felt best suited his rasping voice. The character she had chosen to play Jack was King Rat, the villain from Dick Whittington. Even the curling tail from his backside didn’t seem out of place with how she imagined the man who had dragged her bleeding through the streets of London. Slowly she pushed him across the stage, behind Cinderella’s back. He pounced and Cinderella fell.

  Clara watched fascinated as King Rat dragged Cinderella off the side of the stage. She gasped when Emily plucked a red petal from a bowl of dried flowers on the window sill and allowed it to flutter down onto the spot where Cinderella lay.

  ‘He killed you and dragged you inside. Why?’ whispered Clara.

  Nothing moved; Emily could not respond to such open questions.

  ‘Are you able to leave the house?’ asked Clara.

  Emily pushed Cinderella into the back of the stage, demonstrating that the outside walls were as impassable for her as they were for Clara.

  ‘You’re stuck here alone,’ said Clara.

  Emily brought another character onto the stage. It was Cinderella again, only now her tattered rags had been transformed into a beautiful gown. Emily knew that Clara understood what she meant when she saw a tear form in her eye. The transformed Cinderella represented Clara. Emily was showing her that she did not feel alone, because she had Clara for company.

  ‘If my mother has her way we will move,’ said Clara sadly. ‘The fear is affecting her health. She gets worse every day. Father is worried about her. I am worried about her. I do not want to leave London, but nor do I want to see my mother suffer so much. Living in the suburbs one may as well be dead . . .’ She stopped. ‘Sorry, that was thoughtless. It’s just I cannot bear to be torn apart from this place. Tomorrow we catch the train to see a house my father has found. Somewhere south. I don’t want to leave you, but I don’t think I can stop it now.’

  Emily wished she could cry too, but no tears would come and her dead eyes remained dry and clear. She let both Cinderellas flutter to the ground and found the mechanism which operated the theatre curtains. She lowered the red curtain in front of the stage to indicate that the play was over. If Clara left, Emily was alone in this house. Alone forever.

  62

  The Ballad of Paddy O’Twain

  None of the revellers in the Boar’s Head noticed Reverend Fallowfield return to the pub, as he slipped inside, a hood pulled over his bald head. Neither the living customers enjoying the warmth on that cold winter’s night, nor the ghost of Paddy O’Twain saw him enter and find a seat in a corner. Had Mrs O’Twain not been so rushed off her feet she would have spied him, and reminded him that the seats were for paying customers only. But Mrs O’Twain was distracted by a gang of spirited young Irishmen, leading the entire pub in a rousing singsong. Paddy’s was an unheard voice as he joined in with ballads he hadn’t heard in years, while his wife was busy batting off one of the more amorous members of the gang. Paddy didn’t mind this. He had never been a jealous man in life and was not going to start now. He was having the time of his death.

  Even when Reverend Fallowfield began to mutter to himself in the corner, no one paid him any heed. The Boar’s Head had seen its fair share of mutterers over the years.

  The first Paddy knew of the priest’s presence was a sudden violent tug in his chest. He wondered whether it was a side effect of his latest batch of spirit ale, but a second tug soon convinced him otherwise. Before he knew what was happening he had been dragged across the bar onto the table in the corner and was spinning round like a puppet with tangled strings.

  Reverend Fallowfield threw off his hood to reveal the three-pointed birthmark on his head. His burning eyes focused on Paddy.

  ‘Devil spirit,’ said Reverend Fallowfield. ‘Now, we see your terrible form.’

  The raucous rendition of The Irish Washerwoman petered out as one by one each singer noticed the strange occurrence in the corner of the pub. Mrs O’Twain pushed her way through, demanding to see what the trouble was. When she saw her dead husband suspended above a table, spinning around, she gasped. ‘Paddy?’

  Paddy O’Twain felt very much like he used to feel when his wife would discover him downstairs late at night working his way through a bottle of whiskey.

  ‘Ah, well, hello there, dear,’ he said.

  ‘Ah well, hello there, dear?’ she squawked. ‘You return from the grave and that’s all you can bring yourself to say? These are the words with which you chose to haunt me?’

  ‘Haunting,’ said Paddy. ‘Now, that’s a strong word.’

  ‘Silence,’ cried Reverend Fallowfield, his clawlike fingers tightening their grip, making Paddy wince in discomfort.

  ‘Oh, it’s you again, is it?’ said Mrs O’Twain, turning to confront him. ‘I thought I made it clear what would happen if you returned.’

  ‘You doubted my assertion,’ hissed Reverend Fallowfield. ‘Now see for yourself the demon that lies within your place of sin.’

  ‘That’s no demon, Father. That’s my husband.’

  ‘No longer,’ exclaimed Reverend Fallowfield. ‘Before you, you see a shape of your husband but this thing, this apparition, this aberration is no longer human. God had no part in making it. ’Twas a redder hand which formed this creature.’

  ‘Steady on now,’ said Paddy.

  ‘He still sounds like my husband,’ said Mrs O’Twain, causing laughter from the drunken crowd.

  ‘I am here to release this spirit from its imprisonment,’ said Reverend Fallowfield.

  ‘Release,’ said Paddy. ‘Yes, that would be good. You’re making me dizzy with all this spinning, so you are.’

  Reverend Fallowfield muttered something under his breath. He raised his hands and the muttering grew louder. ‘Damnable spirit, uninvited wretch, unrequested, unwanted . . . unliving. The other side awaits you. You must be gone from this place. You must be gone.’

  Mrs O’Twain, who could see plainly enough the discomfort these words caused her husband, shouted, ‘Leave him alone. I told you I didn’t want this.’

  ‘It is not for you to want,’ replied Reverend Fallowfield. ‘This trespasser shall be chased out, eradicated, extermin­ated. Be gone, foul spirit. Be gone.’

  Paddy’s discomfort turned to pain. He could feel himself being pulled in all directions, as though wild horses were tied to every part of his body. Dark cracks appeared all around him. He could no longer focus on his wife’s face. ‘I’m sorry, dear,’ he managed to utter before pain was all that he knew and Paddy O’Twain was torn apart into nothingness.

  63

  The Hell Hound

  The night sky over London was dark but its streets were aglow with yellow lamplight and teaming with all life. In amongst that life, two of its dead made their way through the streets, houses and yards, not caring for the physical obstructions which hindered the living souls.

  Monsieur
Vidocq dragged Tanner behind him, clutching the chain between the two metallic hands clasped tightly around Tanner’s wrists. Tanner struggled to get to his feet but each time he did, Monsieur Vidocq picked up his pace. From the alley in Seven Dials, he took him down Shaftesbury Avenue, then along Piccadilly.

  ‘What do you want with me?’ screamed Tanner.

  ‘A Rogue ghost consorting with a Talker is one thing,’ said Monsieur Vidocq. ‘Having him commit murder is quite another.’

  ‘If you were listening to all that then you’ll have heard that I didn’t know what he was doing. I never told him to kill no one.’

  ‘Then what exactly were you doing?’

  ‘I was trying to get ghosts into the infected houses.’

  ‘And why would a Rogue ghost want to do that?’

  ‘The Black Rot,’ said Tanner. ‘We’ve got to stop the Black Rot.’

  ‘La Pourriture Noire,’ said Monsieur Vidocq. ‘What concern is this of you?’

  ‘We were investigating it,’ replied Tanner.

  ‘We?’

  ‘Lapsewood and me.’

  ‘Ah.’ Monsieur Vidocq stopped, giving Tanner enough time to stand. ‘Lapsewood.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s one of your Bureau lot, ain’t he? He’ll tell you. I was helping him.’

  ‘And he told you to enlist the help of this Talker, did he? Most interesting.’

  ‘Yes, well, no. Not exactly, but—’

  ‘So you are both implicated in this scandal?’

  ‘I already told you, I didn’t know—’

  Vidocq interrupted him. ‘—that he was killing people. Yes, you said. Unfortunately for you, ignorance is no excuse.’

  ‘So what you going to do?’ asked Tanner defiantly.

  They were standing by the park. At day it would have been as busy as any part of London, but at night without streetlights it was a dead space in the city. The only living souls to venture in at night were those who desired the seclusion its darkness offered. Monsieur Vidocq yanked on the chain, pulling Tanner off his feet and dragging him across the grass.

  ‘You planning on locking me up or what?’ said Tanner.

  ‘An arrest requires a great deal of administration. I myself find the whole thing very frustrating. Especially when there are more appropriate methods of dealing with your indiscretions.’

  ‘What are you on about?’ asked Tanner.

  ‘You have no idea what you are involved in. You cannot comprehend what you have done. And yet for someone so ignorant you have been the cause of much trouble.’

  ‘Listen, I didn’t know Jack was killing people,’ protested Tanner.

  ‘This is not about the Talker,’ said Monsieur Vidocq.

  ‘What then?’

  ‘The anomalies.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Les chiens, the hounds. You fed them to the houses.’

  ‘I was using them to test if it was safe.’

  ‘Safe?’ Monsieur Vidocq laughed. ‘Not a word I would use. The church in Shadwell had been infected so long it had drawn something terrible from the Void; a formless thing of unimaginable horror, a different kind of darkness . . . what some might call a demon.’

  Deeper into the darkness, Monsieur Vidocq dragged him.

  ‘A demon?’ said Tanner.

  ‘Oui, a demon. This thing was trapped within the confines of the church. With no body it wore the building as its clothes. Even the living could sense its presence and yet, imprisoned as it was, it could do no harm. Not until you found a solution of how to release it.’

  ‘A solution?’

  ‘It was a formless demon in search of a body. And you provided it with one. You gave it the body of a hound.’

  ‘Lil’ Mags ran in,’ protested Tanner. ‘I tried to stop her.’

  ‘Ah, you English do so love your animals.’ Monsieur Vidocq had slowed down as they approached a large bush. The sounds of the city were distant and dreamlike. If not for the shimmer of the streetlamps, Tanner could have believed they were standing in the middle of the countryside. He spotted something shift in the darkness, ghost-silent and blacker than night.

  ‘This demon took the hound’s form and escaped the church,’ said Monsieur Vidocq. ‘The damage you have done is . . . what’s the word? Oh yes, admirable.’

  ‘What does it want?’ asked Tanner, struggling to free himself from the cuffs, fearful of the approaching creature.

  ‘It wants your soul,’ said Vidocq. ‘This thing you created feeds on the souls of ghosts. With each one it devours it grows larger.’

  ‘I didn’t mean any of this to happen. We were trying to help. We were just using the hounds to check the houses were safe. We’re on the same side. We have to stop it.’

  ‘Stop it? Non.’ Vidocq shook his head. ‘Feed it, Monsieur Tanner. We must feed it. And the same side? I don’t think so. You see, your fate is to be devoured by the creature you created. It is neat, is it not?’

  Vidocq swung the chain and hurled Tanner into the darkness. He stumbled and tripped and felt something land on top of him. It held him down.

  ‘Au revoir,’ said Monsieur Vidocq.

  The creature loomed over Tanner. Its cavernous mouth drooled. He could see its black teeth and eyes like shadows in the darkness. It lowered its huge head and moved in for the kill.

  Pinned to the ground, Tanner stared into the jaws of despair. Regret flooded his mind. He wished he had never turned his back on the Unseen Door. There was no chance of tranquillity now. This creature would tear him apart and feed on his soul.

  A cold breeze blew through the park, but neither ghost nor hound felt its chill.

  ‘Go on, then,’ shouted Tanner. ‘You might as well get it over and done with.’

  The hound did not move. Its warm breath stank of devoured souls. Its black eyes were alive with death.

  ‘I said you might as well be done with me,’ said Tanner.

  The hound growled. Tanner shut his eyes and waited.

  And waited.

  When he opened them again the beast had moved. It edged back, releasing him from its grip. Tanner scrambled to his feet. His instinct was to turn to Ether Dust and go but the handcuffs prevented him. The hound stared at him. He stared back and realised he knew those eyes.

  ‘Lil’ Mags?’ he whispered. ‘Is that you?’

  The hound lowered its huge head and stepped forward. Tanner reached up and, ever so cautiously, tickled it under its chin. It pushed its chin into his hand.

  ‘Lil’ Mags,’ Tanner exclaimed. ‘It is you.’

  He reached up to stroke her again but the hound snarled. He raised his hands to protect himself and it snapped its jaws shut on the chain between the handcuffs, breaking straight through, releasing Tanner. The handcuffs and chain fell to the ground.

  ‘Good girl, Lil’ Mags,’ said Tanner.

  The hound threw its head back and howled, then turned and ran, its black shape moving towards the shimmering lights of Piccadilly. Understanding what he had to do, Tanner took chase.

  64

  A Widow’s Grief

  Sam was relieved Inspector Savage had not thought to interrogate him as well as his father. The inspector clearly knew Jack was back killing and Sam knew the reason. He had no desire to protect his uncle, but nor could he reveal the truth. To make himself informer would be to invite too many questions, the answers to which would be a matter of official record. Sam had no desire to go public with his supernatural abilities. He did not know what had been said during Inspector Savage’s interrogation and Mr Toop did not bring up the subject until the following morning over breakfast.

  ‘I should never have let Jack stay,’ he said. ‘I should have sent him away that night or else turned him over to Savage when he lay in that coffin.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’ asked Sam.

  Mr Toop forked a mushroom into his mouth and considered his answer. ‘For years we were all each other had. Jack and I. He was my little brother. I suppose I felt protective, but Jack never n
eeded my protection.’

  ‘What about the other time he came back before I was born?’ Sam was still thinking about Jack’s mention of his mother. ‘What happened then?’

  Mr Toop carefully cut the rind off the bacon. ‘If I tell you, you won’t be able to unknow it.’

  ‘I need to know,’ said Sam.

  Mr Toop put down his cutlery and pushed his plate away. ‘I suppose you do,’ he said. He fell silent again for a moment. ‘I’ve never told you the truth about how your mother and I met.’

  ‘You told me you met when she came here to bury her father.’

  Mr Toop pushed the tips of his fingers together until they turned pink with the pressure. ‘We met when she came to bury her husband.’

  ‘Her husband?’

  ‘There was nothing untoward in what we did,’ said Mr Toop quickly. ‘Your mother was a widow when we met. She wore black for the year that followed his death and we were discreet with our affections. Friendship came first. We never once acted upon our feelings, but when you fall in love you are as helpless as a leaf on a breeze.’

  ‘Why have you never told me this before?’

  Mr Toop walked to the window, with his back to Sam. ‘Her father disapproved. He wanted her to continue wearing black long after a year of mourning. I think he would have had her remain in her widow’s weeds for the rest of her life, but we had fallen in love. Only one thing stood in the way of our marriage. Him.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have married without his consent?’

  ‘Your mother would not. So we did the only thing we could do. We waited for the old man to die.’

  ‘I don’t see what this has to do with Jack?’ said Sam.

  ‘That’s when he came to visit. It had been a long time since I’d seen him. We went for a drink and I confessed my troubles. I told him that I wished the old man would get on with it and die so your mother and I could begin our lives. The next day, your mother came to the shop. I knew at once something was wrong. She told me how a burglar had broken into the house that night and killed the old man as he lay sleeping in his bed. He was smothered by his own pillow.’