The Death Collector

by Justin Richards

  ‘I’ve never really been interested in the theatre,’ George was saying. ‘Well, not really. Not the plays anyway. I’m interested in the mechanisms.’

  ‘Mechanisms?’

  ‘The way the curtains are operated. The manner in which scenery is changed, backcloths dropped in. Trap doors. That sort of thing. I am an engineer, after all.’

  ‘You might be able to help with a theatrical mechanism of ours, actually,’ Liz realised. ‘Mr Jessop, our producer, is having some trouble with an ashtray.’

  ‘An ashtray?’

  ‘A silver ashtray. It has to fly across the stage from a table and land in a person’s lap several yards away. It is presenting something of a problem.’

  George thought about this for several moments. ‘I would need to know the size and weight of the ashtray,’ he decided. ‘And the distance it must travel. But I imagine a simple spring and a hair trigger release would do the trick.’

  At some point during their conversation, Liz had taken George’s arm. She was not sure exactly when this had been. She squeezed it to be sure that he had noticed.

  George stiffened. ‘What was that?’ He pulled his arm gently free from hers and held up his hand to silence her. ‘I heard something. Behind us.’

  ‘I did think we were being followed earlier,’ Liz admitted.

  ‘Yes. There’s someone there, in the shadows, look.’ He raised his voice, calling: ‘Come on out, whoever you are.’

  ‘We know you’re there,’ Liz added, trying to keep the nerves out of her voice.

  A small dark figure detached itself from a different shadow to the one Liz had been shouting at. ‘Cor blimey!’ it exclaimed. ‘It’s taken you long enough, ain’t it?’

  ‘I thought you promised not to leave the room,’ George spluttered.

  ‘I promised not to go out the door,’ Eddie corrected him. ‘And I didn’t. I climbed out the window,’ he explained, as if this was completely reasonable. ‘How was the séance then? Did you talk to the spirit of Mr Wilkes?’

  ‘I’m not really sure,’ George admitted. ‘It was most peculiar.’

  ‘The business with the glass did seem genuine somehow,’ Liz agreed, ‘though the rest of the show was trickery and illusion.’

  Eddie nodded. ‘Lot of it about. So what’s this glass business, then?’

  ‘It spelled out letters,’ George explained. ‘Though they don’t make much sense.’

  ‘O R I M O,’ Liz told him.

  ‘Well, that’s something, innit?’

  ‘Hardly,’ George said, ‘we were lucky to escape an unfortunate situation.’

  ‘Luck was it? Eddie asked. He seemed to be trying not to laugh.

  ‘Yes,’ Liz told him. ‘A rather unpleasant gentleman was keen to know how to contact the spirit world. Luckily there was a fire somewhere in the house, and he was distracted.’

  ‘There weren’t no fire,’ Eddie said.

  ‘How do you know?’ George asked. ‘You weren’t there.’

  Eddie coughed. ‘There weren’t no fire,’ he repeated. ‘Someone shouted fire as a distraction.’

  Liz frowned. ‘But who would …’ She stopped as she realised what Eddie was telling them.

  ‘You were there?’ George had realised too. ‘After all we said, after what we agreed? How can we ever trust you again after this?’

  ‘There’s gratitude,’ Eddie complained.

  Eddie had a point, Liz thought. She was angry with him too, but it was lucky that he had been there with his wits about him. She sighed, trying to explain. ‘Look, we’re grateful for the help, really we are.’

  ‘Don’t sound it. You never do. If Blade finds you he’s going to want his bit of paper. If he finds me, he’ll likely cut my throat. Now it seems like we got a clue from this séance and I get not a word of thanks for the idea nor for saving you at the end of it. You don’t believe I can do anything to help, though I’m in just as deep as you are. Don’t even believe I saw a monster either, do you?’

  ‘You were scared,’ Liz said gently. ‘It could have been a tree or anything.’

  ‘I know what I saw,’ Eddie said. ‘You weren’t there. But I was. You just don’t trust me.’

  ‘Leave him be,’ George told Liz. ‘If he’s got it into his head there’s a monster, we won’t talk him out of it.’ They continued down the street in uneasy silence.

  The moon was a pale sliver of light that danced in and out of the scudding clouds. Crouched in amongst the trees, Eddie began to wonder if this was a good idea after all.

  He had been angry with George and Liz when they laughed at his story about the monster. George had told him it was all his imagination. Although Liz had been sympathetic, she had agreed with George. But Eddie knew what he had seen.

  Yet Liz and George weren’t interested. George had offered to walk Liz home and they had agreed to meet again tomorrow when George had a day off from the Museum. There was a mystery here that he could solve, Eddie was certain, but they just weren’t seeing it. There was a monster, and it lived near where Albert Wilkes had disappeared – in the grounds of the house where those men had taken him. That wasn’t just by chance, there had to be some connection. Well, he’d show them. He would go back, he had decided, and get proof. He didn’t know what sort of proof, but he’d find it.

  That had been the plan. Now he was not so sure. He had to climb over the wall because there was a man on guard at the gate. Now he found there were more men patrolling the grounds. Eddie was shivering in the cold, hiding behind a tree and hoping the moon stayed hidden until the second man, the one guarding the house, had gone.

  Eddie had seen him walking first one way then the other. The man paused to stamp his feet in the cold or to light a cigarette. In the brief flashes of thin moonlight, Eddie could see him clearly on the gravel pathway. He was stocky, his bulk emphasised by his heavy coat. A cap was pulled down low over his eyes, and over his shoulder was slung what Eddie had at first thought was a fishing rod.

  But as he crept closer, he saw that it was a shotgun. Eddie quickly slunk back into the trees and wondered if he had been foolish to come here. Perhaps he should have waited until morning and tried to convince George and Liz to come with him.

  ‘They didn’t believe me before, they wouldn’t believe me then,’ he murmured to himself. No, it was up to Eddie to investigate on his own. He held his breath as the guard walked close in front of him and didn’t exhale again until the guard was long gone. He watched the guard disappear into the mist, waited until he could no longer hear the crunch of the man’s feet on the gravel. Then Eddie ran quickly and quietly in the opposite direction. Towards the place where he had seen the monster.

  The more he thought about it, the more he thought that maybe George was right, about the monster at least. What had he really seen? A tree blowing in the breeze, its branches clutching like claws? Dark clouds hurrying across the sky?

  He was running on the grass so as to make no noise. The house was a dark shape across the gravel drive that ran around it. As he came round the side of the house, Eddie could see a large room jutting out of the back as if recently added. Light was seeping round the edges of huge blacked-out windows. A thumping sound made him stop abruptly. The sound stopped too, and he realised it was his feet. He was no longer on grass.

  Eddie stopped and looked down. He was on a narrow gravel path which seemed to run from the house towards the trees. Or rather, as the moon dipped out from behind the clouds, he could see it led to a small hut positioned just at the edge of the wooded area.

  As he drew closer, he could see that the hut was much bigger than he thought. The whole of the front was a large wooden door with a heavy iron bar resting across brackets to keep it shut. It was too heavy for Eddie to lift.

  What was behind the doors? A coal bunker perhaps? Storage for garden tools? Eddie pressed his ear to the rough wood. There was something inside. He could hear it. He strained to work out what it was. A puffing, rasping, regular rush of sound. It last
ed several seconds then stopped. After a pause it came again.

  The clouds parted to reveal the moon, and in the increased light Eddie glanced back – to see the guard with the gun coming round the path from the front of the house. Quickly and quietly, he slipped round the side of the hut. It was built of brick, he realised – solid and substantial. He waited a moment, then made a dash for the trees.

  The man continued his patrol, oblivious to Eddie’s presence. But Eddie was not watching him. He was staring back at the dark smudge that was the hut. What had he heard? Was it the sound of a train on the underground perhaps? Maybe there was a tunnel close to the coal chute or whatever was behind the doors. Or maybe it was water rushing through a sewer.

  But no matter what Eddie thought it might be, nothing could displace his first impression. The thought that it sounded like something breathing.

  Chapter 12

  Eddie was exhausted when he finally climbed into bed. He fell asleep almost at once, dreaming of fog and monsters and men with guns.

  He was wakened by the light streaming in through the open window and the sounds of London. Carriages clattered past in the street outside; paper boys shouted headlines; someone cursed loudly. And an enticing smell of bacon wafted up the stairs. It was the smell that revived Eddie and which reminded him where he was. He hadn’t bothered even to take his jacket off, so he went straight downstairs.

  There was a small kitchen at the back of the house. ‘Something smells nice,’ Eddie announced as he went in.

  George was standing by a little stove. He flinched visibly at Eddie’s voice and almost dropped the frying pan he was holding through a wrapped tea towel.

  ‘Dear Lord, you gave me the fright of my life,’ George said when he had recovered a little. The bacon hissed and sizzled in the pan.

  Eddie was laughing. ‘I could see that.’

  ‘How did you get in here?’

  Eddie frowned. ‘You gave me use of the room. Said I could sleep in there.’

  ‘Yes, but you weren’t there last night when I got back from escorting Miss Oldfield home. I thought you’d be waiting outside.’

  ‘Can’t help that.’ Eddie leaned over the stove to inspect the bacon. ‘There’s not much in there. You not having breakfast, then?’

  George moved him aside. ‘I didn’t know you were here.’

  ‘Must have got back after you then,’ Eddie said. ‘You can get in through windows as well as out of them.’ He pronounced it ‘win-ders’.

  George was about to respond to this when he was pre-empted by a loud knocking from the front door.

  ‘Might be the postman,’ Eddie decided. ‘I’ll go and see.’

  ‘You will not,’ George told him firmly. ‘You will stay and finish cooking my breakfast.’

  ‘What about my breakfast, then?’ But George had already gone. So Eddie picked up a dirty fork from the wooden table in the middle of the small kitchen and helped himself to a rasher of bacon out of the pan.

  Augustus Lorimore paced up and down in front of a display case of stuffed birds. His face was pale and drawn with anger. ‘This Protheroe,’ he snapped, ‘is making enquiries about Glick. And he has seen the body. He is a nuisance.’

  Blade kept his expression neutral. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Him and his friends.’

  ‘We don’t know that they are friends, sir. It could be a coincidence. Archer works in a different Department at the Museum.’

  Lorimore paused, turned towards Blade, gave a snort of derision and then continued his pacing. ‘Of course they are in league. You saw Archer and Protheroe together at the Museum the night you failed to retrieve the final volume of Glick’s diary, did you not? And Archer has been here – to this very house.’

  Blade knew better than to argue. He had also caught the emphasis on ‘failed’ and he knew his life hung by a spider’s thread at this moment.

  ‘No,’ Lorimore continued, ‘they are in this together. And this street urchin who deceived you. And possibly others.’

  ‘But what do they want, sir?’ Blade hazarded.

  ‘The same as I, of course. They want it for themselves, or to deny it to me. It doesn’t matter which. I must have it.’ His eyes burned as he fixed them on Blade. ‘And they have this page from the diary. A clue, it must be, to where Glick hid it. I have spent years tracking it down, tracing it to Glick, realising the clue would be in his private diaries. I must know what he did with it, and for that I must have the diary page, Blade – you understand?’

  There was an old man at the door. He was wearing a full-length dark coat, and silver hair poked out from under his hat. Sir William Protheroe peered at George through his small round spectacles.

  ‘I’m glad to find you at home, Mr Archer,’ he said. ‘May I come in?’ He did not wait for a reply, but pushed quickly past George and made his way into the living room. ‘Is that breakfast I can smell? Capital. I feel as if I could eat a cavalry charge.’

  Somewhat bemused, George closed the door and followed his uninvited guest. He found Sir William making himself at home in George’s favourite armchair. His hat and coat lay discarded over the back of the small sofa.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ George said, ‘is this about the job you mentioned? I’m afraid I’ve not had time to give it much thought.’

  Sir William waved his hand dismissively. ‘No hurry, dear chap. It is the weekend after all. And I don’t suppose that dolt Mansfield has even mentioned it to you yet, has he?’

  ‘Well, no, sir, actually he has not. Do you think perhaps I should mention to him that I have spoken with you?’ George wondered.

  But Sir William Protheroe seemed preoccupied. He sniffed, his forehead crinkling as he frowned. ‘Is that burning bacon I can smell?’

  George left Eddie in the smoke-filled kitchen with instructions about clearing away and washing up. It had not actually been the bacon that Sir William had smelled burning, as that had all been eaten by Eddie. But he had simply replaced the empty pan on the stove, and the fat heated up until it burst into flames, which Eddie thought wonderfully exciting. George had remained calm enough – just – to throw a wet tea towel over the pan, and lift it off the heat.

  ‘And you stay in there and clean up the mess,’ he told the boy. ‘I have things to discuss with Sir William Protheroe.’

  If Eddie replied, his words were lost in the drifting smoke.

  The armchair was empty when George returned to the living room and George saw that Sir William was standing by the bookcase in the corner of the room. He was examining the spines of the books there.

  ‘You read a lot, Mr Archer?’

  ‘Most of those were my father’s,’ George confessed. ‘I do enjoy reading, but I fear that many of those volumes will remain unread for a while.’

  ‘A pity. There are some interesting books here. And speaking of books …’ He turned from his inspection of the bookcase and returned to the armchair, settling himself back into it. ‘I wonder if you have given any more thought to the identity and motivation of those ruffians who were after Sir Henry Glick’s diary.’

  ‘Well, I have been rather busy,’ George said. He sat down on the sofa, carefully avoiding Sir William’s coat and hat. ‘And I think some of what I have been up to does indeed relate.’

  ‘So have I. Busy researching our friend the late Sir Henry Glick. But we shall come to that in a moment. First, perhaps you can tell me what you have been busy with, if you believe it is relevant.’

  George paused, wondering what he should say. There was something about the man sitting opposite him that inspired confidence. ‘I have been spending much of my time trying to discover who was so desperate to get hold of Glick’s diary. And why they want it badly enough to resort to murder.’

  Sir William replaced his glasses. ‘Alas, poor Percy,’ he murmured. ‘And poor Albert too, come to that.’

  ‘You knew Albert Wilkes?’

  Sir William adjusted his head. ‘Until last night I had never knowingly set eyes on t
he poor man.’

  ‘Last night?’

  ‘I didn’t even realise who he was until the body disappeared, then I made some enquiries and found he had worked with Percy, who I did know slightly.’ Sir William paused, staring off into the farthest corner of the room. ‘I’m sorry,’ he went on after a moment, ‘I’m probably not making much sense to you, am I?’

  George nodded. Vaguely he could hear a noise, and it took him a moment to realise that it was another knocking on the front door.

  It was Liz. George led her into the living room and introduced her to Sir William, who shook her hand solemnly before turning to George and raising an eyebrow meaningfully.

  ‘Miss Oldfield,’ George explained, ‘has been helping me investigate the strange case of Sir Henry Glick’s diaries. She has been most helpful.’

  ‘I fear that we have not discovered much,’ Liz admitted. ‘The desecrated grave of Mr Wilkes, a slip of charred paper, and a peculiar but largely fake séance. Little else.’

  ‘That may be more than you think,’ Sir William said slowly. ‘Let me tell Miss Oldfield about who I am and what I do. Mr Archer already knows,’ he told Liz. ‘And he also knows that we may actually be investigating different aspects of the same mystery. Since he appears to trust you, and I value his judgement, there are things that you should know.’

  George moved the coat and hat so that he and Liz could sit together on the sofa. Sir William Protheroe leaned forward in his armchair. His fingertips tapped rhythmically together, and he began to speak. He told Liz much of what he had told George that night after the break-in and Percy’s death. He explained the Department of Unclassified Artefacts, and he told them both how he had read through the surviving volumes of Henry Glick’s diary and also researched the man’s career and life.

  ‘And it seemed to me that a recent investigation of my own might be related in some way,’ he went on. ‘From what Mr Archer tells me of your own exploits it seems I was right. You see, last night, I performed a brief examination of a body that was brought to me. An elderly man called Albert Wilkes. Yes, you begin to see the connection. You know that Wilkes was initially responsible for cataloguing Glick’s diary, and you know that he died – apparently of natural causes. Mr Archer tells me his grave was perhaps opened, and that I find especially intriguing. Because I found, before it mysteriously disappeared, that Wilkes’s body had been tampered with.’