“Sir, can I help you?” she asked. “Sir?”
“Mr. Holliwell!” he called as he marched down the hall. He peered in every door, and opened any closed ones. “Elliot!”
A clerk pressed himself against the wall as Ainsley passed, and others slipped into doorways to get out of his way. Finally, a man with a stack of envelopes in his hands pointed to a door.
Ainsley smiled slyly. “Thank you.”
Inside, he found Elliot and a girl Ainsley recognized from the orphanage seated on his lap. The girl stood abruptly at the sound of the door and took a step away from Elliot, who seemed more disappointed than surprised.
“She’s from your mother’s school?” Ainsley asked, even more disgusted with the man seated in front of him.
“Yes,” Elliot answered. “The arrangement is no different than what you have with Benjamin.” Elliot smiled crookedly and winked at Ainsley.
Ainsley would have clocked him right there were he not concerned for the girl who stood timidly to the side. “Gather your things and head back to the orphanage. You will not return tomorrow.” Ainsley cocked his head toward the door, signalling for the girl to leave.
The girl, who was no more than fourteen years old, nodded and quickly left.
Elliot stood to protest but Ainsley pushed him back down in the chair. He was surprised how easily it was to push Elliot around. “What’s the matter? You only hit women, I suppose.”
Ainsley watched as Elliot’s lips tightened and jaw clenched.
“We just paid a visit to your mother,” Simms said from behind Ainsley. He slipped inside, though not too far, and crossed his arms over his chest while he leaned on the doorframe.
Elliot gave a sideways smile. “Oh, I see,” he said as he leaned back in his chair as if a king on a throne. “You are trying to pretend to be all noble and such. That’s fine, gentlemen, your secret is safe with me.”
Ainsley pounced, grabbing Elliot by the collar and pulling him to his feet. “You are just a scared little boy, aren’t you? You wouldn’t dare raise your hand to someone who could knock you out, now would you?”
“He’d probably piss his pants,” Simms said from the door.
Elliot batted at Ainsley’s arms but it did nothing to loosen Ainsley’s grip. “What would a toff like you know about beating up a man? Ah, yeah, some bruiser you are, huh?”
Ainsley punched him, landing his knuckle squarely on Elliot’s jaw. Elliot staggered back, clumsily steadying himself on a teetering filing cabinet. Ainsley shook out his hand at his side and stretched his neck, sending a loud crack into the room. “A lot has changed since we were kids, jackass.”
Elliot stood and used the back of his hand to wipe some blood from the corner of his mouth. “You’re mad.”
Ainsley huffed. “Touch her again and I will hit harder.”
Elliot slumped into his chair and propped his elbows on his knees. Ainsley leaned on the desk and stared down at him. “Benjamin Catch, where is he?”
“Haven’t seen him for a while now,” he answered with a disinterested shrug. “Has to be at least two days, maybe more. Why does it matter to you?”
Ainsley took a step closer, causing Elliot to flinch. He placed his arm over his head and turned away, as if expecting another blow.
“The boy hasn’t been seen since late last night,” Simms explained from the door.
Ainsley grabbed Elliot under his arm and pulled him clumsily to his feet. “You wouldn’t know anything about that now, would you?” Ainsley asked threateningly. He pinched Elliot’s arm and held him close. He was relying on every ounce of self-control he could muster to keep from pummelling the bloke.
“No, I haven’t seen him,” Elliot answered. Squirming, he tried to inch away from Ainsley’s strong hold. “Ow, would you let me go?”
With a narrow gaze, Ainsley released him, letting him drop into his office chair. Elliot readjusted his collar and tie before feeling his lip once more. Already beginning to swell, there was no denying Ainsley’s hit was going to leave a mark.
“Must I truly answer for his whereabouts?” Elliot said, glancing nervously from both Simms and Ainsley. His gaze dropped to his desk and he let out a panicked breath. “What more do you want from me?” He opened one of his desk drawers and reached inside. Before he could pull his hand out Ainsley leaned into the drawer.
The resounding yelp that escaped Elliot must have reached the other offices but no one came to his aid. Even Simms remained aloof and unaffected at the door. Elliot tried to stand but Ainsley shifted his stance without taking pressure from the drawer and forced Elliot to sit back down.
“I think you’re lying...Where is he?” Ainsley asked with a marked growl.
“I don’t”—Elliot scrunched up his face in pain—“know.”
Ainsley pressed more forcefully on the drawer. “Think harder.”
Elliot squealed again, and writhed in pain. “I don’t know. I don’t know!” he yelled in quick succession.
“Peter, that’s enough,” Simms said from the door.
Leaning in, Ainsley looked Elliot in the eye before he eased up the pressure on the drawer. Elliot drew his hand back quickly, cradling it against his body. Ainsley knew it wasn’t broken, he hadn’t applied enough pressure for that. Elliot glared at him from his seat. He’d probably have hit Ainsley by now had his hand not been injured. The thought made Ainsley smile.
“Where were you the night before last?” Simms asked.
“After you beat your mother,” Ainsley clarified.
Elliot shrugged. “I went for a walk.”
“So late at night?” Simms asked.
“I went to the public house for a bit of gin, no crime in that, is there?”
“What else?” Ainsley pressed as he crossed his arms over his chest.
Elliot looked up to him and swallowed nervously. “I met a woman and I paid her a little attention, is all.”
“Engaging a prostitute is enough to send you to the clink,” Simms said, tapping his pen on his notepad.
“Who said she was a prostitute?”
“You’re lying,” Ainsley charged. “No woman in London would lie with you. You’d have to pay her.”
“Come now, that’s enough.” Elliot stood but Ainsley pushed him back down.
Leaning in, Ainsley forced Elliot to look him in the eye while he spoke. “I know you’re lying. Stop playing games. The entire city is looking for someone to hang and my friend Simms here has more than enough evidence to bring before a jury, so start telling us the truth or we’ll just arrest you here and now.”
With a stern face, Simms pulled a small pair of manacles from his inside pocket. The sight of them nearly sent Elliot into a panic.
“You think I did something to those kids?” Elliot asked harshly. “Is that what this is about?”
“The thought crossed my mind,” Ainsley said, glancing to Simms.
Elliot huffed. “I thought I was being followed. Bluebottles everywhere I turn, it seems nowadays. Tell me, detective, did your boys see me with the boy outside the orphanage? Will they corroborate your theory?”
“They don’t need to. Your connection to the children is quite apparent,” Simms said from the door.
“Some of the children. The others I would have no connection to.” Elliot’s voice began to falter and his tough exterior began to break down. “I never hurt those kids. I’ll admit I cared nothing for them but it’s not like the rest of the city neither. No one paid no nevermind to those foundlings.”
Ainsley shook his head, disgusted.
“Oh, confess Peter, you had no interest in these children either until The Surgeon came along.”
Ainsley shifted in place but his face remained hard.
“Now everyone is beating down our door to help. Even your own sister was quick to raise funds for our charity. Less than a year ago no one in the city noticed our little foundling school. Now all we hear about is the poor, dear children. I’ve been hearing it all my life and i
t makes me sick to think my mother cared more about them than she ever did for me.” Elliot face scrunched up in disgust. “Give it time, gentlemen. You will either catch your man or he will fade away and then no one will give the children another thought. And you and your sister will live the rest of your smug lives believing you made a difference when it was The Surgeon who made the real difference. He got you and an entire city to see the children you once stepped over without a second glance. Admit it, Peter, you aren’t angry with me or him. You’re cross with yourself. I swear I had nothing to do with those kids who died.”
Ainsley clenched a fist and took a step forward. “You expect us to believe that?”
Simms shifted his stance and kept his gaze on Elliot. When Ainsley looked over he saw the detective’s demeanor soften. “He’s telling the truth,” Simms said at last, his mind made up.
“He beat his mother,” Ainsley said.
“But he didn’t kill her,” Simms said in the man’s defence, “and he didn’t kill those children either.” Short of pulling Ainsley from him, it was clear Simms wanted Ainsley to leave with him. “Let’s go. We’ve heard enough.”
Ainsley stood over Elliot, who licked his sore, fattening lip. Without a second thought, Ainsley delivered a sharp jab to Elliot’s nose and watched as Elliot’s face snapped back from the impact. “Lay another hand on your mother and I will come back.”
Before Ainsley quitted the room he glanced back to Elliot, who sat with blood-soaked hands clenching his nose. “Put some ice on it,” Ainsley said before leaving.
Chapter 26
We shall be near you in your poet-languors
And wild extremes,
She tried to back out of it, and even conjured up many possible excuses for her absence, but in the end Margaret relented. It would be rude, she told herself, since Bethany had invited her personally and Margaret had said herself that she hadn’t a female friend in all of London. Too many years in the countryside left her with the curse of always being outside society, looking in like a child at a candy shop window.
She wasn’t sure, though, if she could withstand Ainsley’s resentment for long. He didn’t understand this longing she had to be involved, to ask him about his cases. He viewed her probing as doubt in his abilities when it couldn’t be further from the truth. She wanted to learn from him, to see a crime scene the way he and that detective saw it. He used to seek her counsel but perhaps he felt in this case it was too much, that she was too delicate to assist in tracking down a child killer. If anything, Margaret wanted to prove him wrong.
“Are you all right, Margaret?” Bethany asked from the other side of the trap, an open carriage with benches facing each other. It was a tight squeeze getting everyone in, but the excitement of the night helped everyone forget about the close quarters.
Margaret looked up from her tightly wrung hands and suddenly relaxed. “Oh, yes,” she said with a smile. “Just picking daisies.”
Margaret glanced to Bethany’s mother, Mrs. Clarissa Brundell, who sat beside Bethany on the opposite side of the carriage. To Margaret’s right sat Bethany’s brother, Joseph, and his wife, Annabelle, but to Margaret’s left sat an unfamiliar man.
The tour was being led by two men, a driver and a guide, both profiteers, in Margaret’s view. She had no doubt they increased their price once they saw the caliber of their tourists. Margaret had tried to dress with austerity but as they rolled through the poorer neighbourhoods of London it became clear how overdressed she was.
“It gets quite dark in these parts,” the man beside Margaret said. He was speaking to her directly, leaning as if sharing some private knowledge. Margaret gave a nervous smile.
“Is this your first time on the tour?” the stranger asked.
“Yes,” she answered. She had meant to say more, even ask him how many times he had taken it but the words did not come. Instead, her mind questioned why someone would want to come more than once and when she looked to him he was already looking away to some fistfight that had broken out in the street.
Bethany shrieked and hid her face with her hand, and the upper-class tourists began shifting in their seats. Margaret took a deep breath and concentrated on her hands, so she did not have to see the brutality.
“Don’t worry, Miss,” the stranger beside her said with a smile. “They won’t give you any trouble, I’ll see to that.”
Margaret felt obliged to nod her thanks but regretted it deeply when he inched closer to her on the bench. There was no further room for Margaret to move away. She looked to Bethany across the carriage, but she was engaged in conversation with her mother and did not notice Margaret’s distress.
A little further down the lane the carriage stopped and the guide stood up and turned toward them as if it were a theatrical event.
“The first murder took place here,” he said, making a grand sweep of his arms to the right of the carriage. Between two buildings a brick archway framed a dark alley that appeared to go on forever. A pile of refuse was heaped along one wall and behind it Margaret could make out the form of a man, slumped to the ground, a smoking pipe in his hand. “A girl walked down this street at dusk when The Surgeon beckoned her to his side from this alley.” The man spoke slowly, sweeping his arms above for greater effect. “The papers said it was here that she was disemboweled and laid to waste like the pile of rubbish she was found on.”
Margaret searched the carriage for anyone as weary as she. In the failing light she could see most were enraptured by the man’s tale, all except the man who sat next to her. When their gaze met he smiled on one side of his mouth. Margaret turned her gaze quickly but she was too late.
“His story changes with each telling,” he said as he leaned into her. “I heard it was another place entirely where she was picked up. Lured by a warm crust of bread, so it’s told.”
Margaret nodded wearily. She tried to turn her attention back to the guide, who continued to speak at the front of the carriage. The guide sat when the carriage began to roll along again and Margaret looked to Bethany, who behaved as if she were attending an afternoon tea, not a murder tour highlighting the deaths of six defenceless children.
“Friends of yours?” the stranger asked.
Margaret nodded.
“To them, it’s a game,” he explained. “To figure out who did it, as if they could piece it together better than the police. Not like us. It’s not a game to us.”
Margaret agreed. It was amazing how her guilt-ridden conscience caused her to suffer while others seemed wholly unaffected.
After a time of rolling down the cobbled streets the stranger spoke again. “They are better off, you know,” he said.
“You mean to say, they are in heaven,” Margaret suggested.
“Yes, that’s right.”
The carriage stopped at the site where the third victim was found. Margaret remembered reading about it in the papers the morning after her brother had been summoned to help investigate. It was a part of town Margaret had never been and it was interesting to see how her mind had conjured a different image of how everything looked. The wall of the building looked to be covered in a thick layer of filth, accentuated by the water that dripped down the bricks from the rooftop. A butcher, recognized only for his long white apron with speckles of blood down the front, stood before the shop door with his fist planted firmly on his hips.
Here the guide beckoned everyone to disembark before leading the small group in a single file line between the buildings to the back of the butcher shop. While Margaret stepped down from the carriage, she noticed the driver hand the butcher a small pouch of coins. The butcher nodded, slid the pouch into his breast pocket, and pulled the cigar out of his mouth to laugh shamelessly.
“Did you see that?” the stranger asked from behind Margaret. “The butcher gets paid two pounds, six farthings for each tour that comes through to his yard.”
Margaret swallowed nervously. These heartless men profited from the deaths of these children and, what
’s worse, she had been a party to it. A portion of her admittance fee lay in that very pouch.
“Come this way then,” the guide called from down the alley. It was clear he was targeting Margaret and the male stranger who lagged behind the rest of the group.
Once in the yard, Margaret lingered toward the back of the gathering. She had only a passing interest in the tale the guide was telling since she had realized early on that he was embellishing greatly and that his knowledge of the events only extended so far as what was printed in the papers.
“He was a fighter,” the stranger said, so only Margaret could hear.
“I’m sorry, who?”
“The boy.”
In the failing light, Margaret could see the man gesture toward the guide, who was explaining how Jonathon’s body was found.
“Did you read that in the papers?” Margaret asked.
The man nodded.
“My brother said he was to be sent to Canada, as a farmhand,” Margaret explained. She used her gloved hand to wipe a rogue tear from her eye.
“Your brother? A copper?”
Margaret shook her head. “Oh no, but he’s helping them.”
The stranger nodded and surveyed the yard. “The doctor? That Ainsley bloke?”
Margaret was about to nod when something inside her told her to be wary. She had already admitted too much and any further words could mean disaster.
“Margaret?” Bethany’s voice grew over the gathering and then Bethany herself pushed her way through toward Margaret. “I had thought we lost you.” She slipped her arm into Margaret’s and led her away from the stranger. “Margaret, you look unwell. Is something the matter?” Bethany looked over Margaret’s shoulder “Was it that man? Is he bothering you?”
Margaret shook her head, “No,” she said feebly.
Chapter 27
The Dead Among Us Page 21
