by Will Thomas
“Don’t be petulant, Thomas. I may change my mind yet. One proper cut and you’ll spray blood across the floor.” She sighed. “I feel sorry for Mrs. Cowan. She will be a widow twice over. She won’t get to have you, which I suppose makes you mine. Do you like being mine, my pet?”
I didn’t respond. My body was growing weak. I heard the blood dripping on the wooden floor beneath my chair. As she had promised, none of the cuts would require more than a few stitches, but if I was not found until the morning, I’d be dead. It was as simple as that. She crossed in front of me in that frightful, twisted dress to her reticule again and consulted the time on a small watch.
“Oh, dear,” she said. “I must away. I’ve got a train to board. Au revoir, dear boy. I’ll see you in another life.”
Then she was gone and I was alone. I listened to the steady drip of my life force onto the floor, like the ticking of a bomb.
I would have liked to be married. I had come so close. At least Rebecca and I had reconciled our differences. We had professed our love for each other one final time. Perhaps that was enough.
Suddenly, the door kicked open in front of me and a man entered. It was Caleb, I thought. And then I realized it wasn’t.
“Oh, hell!” J. M. Hewitt cried. “She cut you good and proper!”
“What are you doing here?” I asked, raising my head.
“Following you, of course. You appear to be in front of this case since everything is happening to you.”
He took off his jacket, pulled a jackknife from his pocket, and began cutting off the sleeves from his shirt. He seemed to know what he was about as he untied me and began to apply a tourniquet to my arm and another near my knee.
“You’ll live another day, Thomas,” he said.
My body was throbbing from the pressure administered to my limbs. His voice seemed to grow fainter and my mind was drifting.
Hewitt went out into the street and hailed a cab. Then he carefully loaded me into it. I was bleeding in several places, but the wounds were not deep and there was little blood.
“She was mad!” I said after he’d climbed in the other side. “Mad! She was going to kill me. She was going to flay me alive.”
“Calm down, Thomas,” Hewitt said. “You’re scaring the horses.”
“Look at my suit. It’s cut to ribbons. What is wrong with that woman?”
“You said it right. Mad as a hatter.”
“I’ve been shot at, stabbed, hung, even tortured. But nothing prepared me for that.”
“I wish I’d got a single shot at her,” he said.
“So do I,” I muttered. “I’m cold.”
“It’s shock,” he replied. “Have you a change of clothes at your offices? And some bandages?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
I began to shake. My teeth chattered, despite the warmness of a September day.
“How did you find me?”
“I’ve been following you for days,” he replied.
“I saw no one.”
“I’m a professional, Thomas. What sort of agent would I be if I was easily spotted?”
“That witch was following me, too. Her lackey was after me. Not to mention Scotland Yard and the American legation.”
“You’re a popular fellow these days.”
“How does Barker stand this kind of thing?”
“I don’t think even he would be stoic under what you’ve just been through. Try not to talk.”
We reached Craig’s Court and Hewitt rushed me inside. I unlocked the door to number 7 and crossed to the rooms in the back. Jenkins came down and both men painted my wounds in iodine and then I changed into my spare suit.
So far, I had been injured twice in this case. That was more than enough for me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Back home in Newington, thanks to Hewitt, I was treated by Dr. Applegate, whom the Guv keeps on retainer. I had assumed I would need a good number of stitches, but the doctor said he was amazed with the way the epidermal layer had been cut with such precision that I required nothing more than sticking plaster over most of my wounds. Camille Archer had hoped that I would suffer for hours as the blood slowly pumped from my body. Instead, what could have been life-threatening was merely painful. Very painful, indeed.
“How are you feeling?” the Guv asked, propped up in the bed Mac had arranged.
“Some pain, but I’m managing,” I said. “Although I am still grappling with what Camille Archer did to me.”
“She has proven herself to be deadly dangerous, lad. You’re fortunate Hewitt was following you.”
“Sir,” I said. “I’m assuming she is on her way to France with Mercier, since Pritchard is dead. We should cable Dover.”
“Oh? Is she going to Dover?” Barker asked.
“I assume so, since Pritchard is dead. She will flee the country.”
“How do you know Pritchard is dead?”
“I received a telegram from Burberry Asylum.”
Barker nodded. He pulled his pipe from the table and began filling it. Orders be damned. “Did you test the knots?”
“I—”
No, in fact, I hadn’t tested the knots. I had accepted the telegram as genuine merely because it looked official. The Guv would have sent off a telegram of his own, questioning the veracity of the first.
“Pritchard is alive,” I said. “Strathmore was a diversion to split my efforts between two objectives. He had me thinking about the one under my nose while he plotted against us.”
“Indeed,” Barker rumbled.
My employer was being wily. He wouldn’t tell me anything, just prod me along with questions.
“She’s not going to Dover, then! She’s going to Hampshire to see Pritchard with Mercier, who is a known bomb maker. They’re going to break Pritchard from the asylum! We must warn them. I should send a telegram. With luck, it will arrive in time to stop them.”
“If you think it the right decision.”
“I do. But what about Mrs. Archer? Why did he have her tarry merely to torture me?”
The Guv lit his pipe with some degree of pleasure, then blew smoke into the air.
“Did he?”
“No. I suppose she must have decided to do it when she met me. She was flirting with me from the first moment.”
“The Llewelyn charm,” he said acidly.
“Sir, I cannot merely send a telegram. I have to go to New Forest. But is it really possible that Pritchard was feigning dementia? Would he be capable of plotting such a thing? I met him and found his faculties failing.”
“Pritchard is mad, but he is single-minded and extraordinarily clever. He could act as if he were falling into dementia well enough to convince even the staff there that his mind was going.” The Guv began to dig in the bowl of his pipe with a vesta. “And you do need to go, but not tonight. Burberry is remote and you must rest. I don’t believe Mrs. Archer will meet with Pritchard until tomorrow morning. If you take the first express, you should be there in time.”
I nodded, then winced. The slightest movement was painful.
“He must have enjoyed his little charade,” I said. “Sticking pins in me and passing out mid-sentence.”
“That aligns with his morbid sense of humor,” Barker remarked, his pipe clenched between his teeth.
“What is his plan, then, sir? The Continent?”
“America, more likely, Thomas. They don’t have many bogs, but plenty of heiresses. I think he could do very well there.”
“If he can bring about the demise of all his associates merely to cloak his operations among a half dozen viable suspects, then appearing to slide into mental illness is facile by comparison. And what of your brother, sir?”
“For two days I have thought of him and little else. Of course we have quarreled, like all brothers before us, but I never gave him cause to come to London to kill me. Our unspoken arrangement to divide the world between us was satisfactory. On the other hand, if we found o
urselves in the same city, it would be ill-mannered not to meet.”
“You called him a loose cannon,” I reminded him.
“I said so because he is one. He does not solve a problem, he augments it to the point of absurdity. Let us take the Wealden case. Caleb was sent on a routine matter to act as bodyguard for another agent, whom I assume was to speak as a witness at a trial. What was the result? Three men dead, no witness, and he being chased by officers of the American government.”
“What is he really doing here, then? How do we know that he is not Mrs. Archer’s lover, for example?”
“We don’t. My brother is a conundrum. That being said, I do not connect his movements to the case.”
I rested my elbow on the knob of his bedstead. “What of the theft at Cox and Co.? Perhaps he is out of money. He was very interested to see that you are well off. You have been a success, while he goes from catastrophe to catastrophe.”
Barker relit his pipe and leaned against his pillow. He sighed with contentment. He was home, Philippa could not stop him from smoking, and he could ruminate on the case and cross-examine me to his heart’s content.
“I think stealing from my bank account was another part of my life that Pritchard hoped to destroy, or to at least prove that he could interfere with it. At the same time, I believe the stolen funds paid for Mrs. Archer’s hotels and meals, while some have been tucked away for their escape. Five thousand pounds will not last forever, but it will take you far away from here and pay to start a new life somewhere else.”
“So, for now, we must assume our suspects are Mercier and Camille Archer. But we’re left with the troubling question of why they visited several of the suspects.”
“Why, indeed?” Barker muttered. “Let us say that they all colluded in a scheme to bedevil me. Their first concern would be how to escape; the second would be how to leave a thousand pounds richer. But all of them died, in one way or another. That means Mrs. Archer and Pritchard will make off with the rest of the five thousand pounds.”
I had resumed pacing. The thought occurred to me that pipe smoking might be helpful to the mental faculties. The Guv certainly thought better with a meerschaum between his teeth. However, Rebecca had decided opinions about smoking and would never allow it.
“But what about Mercier?” I asked. “What will become of him?”
“This is your case, not mine, Thomas. What would you do in Pritchard’s position?”
I thought, or tried to. “He’s a loose end. Better to get rid of him.”
“Agreed,” the Guv answered. “Very good.”
“Is it possible that there is someone else who wanted to kill you and who could have planned the entire operation? Someone who tricked all of them, and for whom Mrs. Archer works? Obviously, it would be someone not on the list of suspects.”
“No, I trust your judgment. I’m certain you went through the files thoroughly.”
“Yes, sir. Jenkins and I have put them all back in order. But suppose it was a relative of someone, a person we’ve never even suspected?”
“If that’s true, you have to remember that not every case can be solved, lad. There is such a thing as a person clever enough to confound this agency. However, that is unlikely, in my opinion.”
“I fear I have not the imagination for this.”
“Nonsense. You have more imagination than five people. You must merely harness it to one cart and make it pull you.”
I wanted help and he was giving me platitudes. “Yes, sir. Thank you.”
“I have faith in you, Thomas.”
I stifled a sigh of frustration. “I don’t see why. If I can’t solve a case after six years, what good am I?”
“Oh, that old chestnut,” he grumbled. “You doubt yourself.”
“It seemed that I was exactly the sort who would weigh you down, if you think about it,” I said. “I was a failed scholar, and not suited in any way for the position. I was a bloody poet, of all things.”
“Perhaps,” he admitted. “But you were very keen that first day we met. You were the only one to apply for the position that seemed truly alive. Also, you were logical. It was a cold and blustery day, yet you were the only one to use the wall as a shield from the frigid wind. The rest stood in a row, each with a hand on their hat, following the man ahead of him by rote. You were thinking. I wanted that brain working for me. And now look at you. I am injured. My office was bombed. My house has been set afire. Yet I am not concerned and have not shut down the agency. You are there, still keen as you ever were.”
“Thank you for the confidence, sir.”
“I must send Mrs. Cowan flowers,” he said after a minute. “No doubt Philippa has already done so, but I shall choose these myself. I was brusque and rude to the good woman, proving that her fears were justified. Thomas, I owe not only her but you an apology. Husbands must love their wives as Christ loves the Church. There was no wish on my part to separate the two of you. Marriage is a wholesome and natural state for a man. I shall abjectly apologize to Mrs. Cowan and we shall form a strong bond. We will both have need of you, and it will not do to grasp from both sides. That would not be beneficial to anyone.”
“I agree.”
I took my leave and went out into the garden, where Harm was resting on a rock. The stream was gurgling. There was a light breeze and it was a trifle cool as I went to sit in the gazebo to think.
Pritchard had manipulated five suspects in addition to Camille Archer and Mercier. There had been a bombing and Perrine was a dynamiter. There had been a theft from our bank and Strathmore was a financier. I was attacked, and the Mercier brothers were devils with their canes. Rebecca’s house was assaulted by Jack Hobson and his tribe of ruffians and thugs. That left Keller. How did he fit into this?
I thought for a good half an hour before it came to me. Joseph Keller didn’t fit into this at all. He had been imprisoned because of Barker and had been visited by Camille Archer, but that was all. His purpose was to throw us off.
“I won’t let you beat me, Dr. Pritchard,” I said aloud, staring into the empty garden. “I’m not going to leave this case unfinished before my wedding. And I’m not going to bloody wait until tomorrow morning to track the lot of them!”
I jumped from my seat.
“I’m going to New Forest now, sir!” I said as I passed through the hall.
“Fine, then,” he answered. “Go find him!”
Turning again, I ignored Harm, who chased me across the lawn to the back gate. I slipped through and bolted as fast as I could to the stable. Caleb’s horse was gone. I had no time to think about him. I saddled Juno and was leading him out the door just as Caleb arrived.
“Where are you going in such a hurry?” he asked.
“Burberry Asylum,” I replied. “It was Pritchard all along.”
“No, Pritchard’s dead.”
“He wants us to think he is,” I said. “Are you coming?”
“Wouldn’t miss it!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
We spent the next half hour cursing at slow vehicles, skirting dray vans, and occasionally stepping onto paving stones. It would not be the first time I would let Juno have her lead on the staid streets of London, and Pepper was doing his best to keep up.
We caused many a startled look and a blast from a constable’s whistle, but he was afoot and we were not. By the time we arrived at Waterloo, both horses were blowing like bellows.
There threatened to be a delay. One does not arrive at a station with a horse and immediately have him stabled. There were procedures one had to follow.
“Procedures be damned, boy!” Caleb shouted. “How much money does it take to stable a couple of horses and give them a feed bag?”
So saying, he slapped two ten-pound notes on the counter. The porter’s eyes went wide. Then they looked from side to side.
“That’s more like it. Give us two tickets, first class. Bill Pinkerton’s buying today.”
“Yes, Mr. Pinkerton,” the cle
rk said. “Anything you say.”
We found our seats and I sat by the window, my nerve endings so rattled I could barely stay seated. My companion, on the other hand, took off his long coat, pulled the brim of his hat over his eyes, and promptly went to sleep. I could not believe a man could sleep under such conditions.
An hour later, he awoke. The compartment window was open, despite the order of a dyspeptic-looking porter, and Caleb lit another cigarette.
“So, I assume Dr. Pritchard planned this whole thing,” he said. “He set the others onto you. How did you come to that conclusion?”
“He used the other suspects, while claiming to form a partnership. Strathmore provided the money, Perrine brought along the Mercier brothers and their bombs, and Hobson provided muscle and a good diversion.”
“What about Keller? He was visited by Little Miss Muffet herself.”
“I believe Pritchard used him as a ruse. Keller wanted nothing to do with them. I’d even say he had made peace with his maker and was ready for whatever came, good or bad.”
“It’s true that Keller didn’t appear to have the same motives or abilities as the other suspects,” Caleb said, settling back in his seat. “But how would Pritchard have known how to find out who had a grudge against my brother?”
“I’ve been giving this some thought. There are a few ways. He could have read about the cases in The Times, or he could have known some oily solicitor who harbored a resentment toward the Guv. Pritchard’s case was before my time. I suspect he has been planning this for years.”
“Could Pritchard have planned something this devious if he had truly been having electric therapy? Doesn’t that addle the brain?”
“We only have Pritchard’s word that he received such treatments. I believe he said it in order to convince us of his inability to make and carry out complex plans.”
“Sounds reasonable. How is Mrs. Archer involved with this scheme?”
“From the first time I saw her, there was something about her that disturbed me. Looking back, I suspect she was an inmate at Burberry Asylum. Do you recall when we were there before, if there was a fence with all of the female prisoners on the other side? If we arrive and Pritchard’s still alive and in their custody, we will see if Camille Archer, or whatever her name is, was an inmate.”
