The Aylesford Skull

by James P. Blaylock

  “Where are the children?” Alice asked.

  “I’m sure I don’t know, ma’am. I woke up a moment ago and found myself locked into the scullery. Perhaps Finn…”

  “Finn wouldn’t have locked you into the scullery, Mrs. Langley,” St. Ives said, a morbid fear rising in him. “I suggest that you two search the house. I’ll find Finn.” He realized that it was more a certainty than a fear, or the two together, feeding each other. Before he was out the door, however, there came a second pounding. He heard crying – almost certainly Cleo – in the coat closet. The key was in the lock, but was turned – no need for a chair to keep the door shut. He unlocked it and let her out. She dragged her blanket behind her, evidently fuddled with sleep. As soon as she saw her mother she burst into tears, trying to speak but without any success. Alice picked her up, comforting her, walking her back and forth until she was sensible. St. Ives watched, his heart pounding, praying that this was one of Eddie’s games, although the chair against the scullery door…

  “Did your brother lock you in?” Alice asked.

  Cleo shook her head. “The man came,” she said between sobs. “He took Eddie. He put me in the closet and I mustn’t make a sound or he would hurt Eddie.”

  “When did the man come?” St. Ives asked. “Was it dark outside, Cleo?”

  She nodded.

  “And did you fall asleep in the closet after?” Alice asked her, and she nodded again.

  Alice looked evenly at St. Ives. “The man,” she said flatly.

  “I’ll just speak to Finn now,” St. Ives said, pushing through the gallery door and down the several stairs. How much had he told Alice about the skulls when he had recounted his conversation with Mother Laswell – surely not that they were commonly taken from children? He hoped fervently that he had left the details out. As he sprinted to Finn’s cottage the idea came to him that he would tell Alice to be on the lookout for a ransom demand: there was hope in a ransom, after all. Surely that’s what Narbondo intended… He knocked on Finn’s door, which opened immediately, Finn disheveled from sleep and holding a magazine open in his hand. “I was lying abed, sir, it being Saturday.”

  “Good for you, Finn, but there’s trouble. Eddie’s been taken.”

  “Taken, sir?”

  “Kidnapped, I fear. Did you see anything odd early this morning? Hear anything? You haven’t seen Eddie up and about?”

  Finn stared at him blankly, and, it seemed to St. Ives, turned pale. “No, sir. But last night, there was a man on the road. I didn’t think…”

  “What did he look like? A dark-haired smallish man? With a hump on his back?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s him. I was out looking at a deer that had got into the roses. I seen a corpse candle near the road, and walked down the wisteria alley, and there at the crossing your man sat in the wagon. He asked the way to the London Road, and so I told him.”

  “A corpse candle do you say?”

  “Yes, sir. A spirit light, hovering nearby the wagon. It was the ghost of a boy; I could see that much. I didn’t like the look on your man’s face, sir, but I can’t rightly tell you why. It was a thing you could smell almost. I can’t think of another way to put it. I made sure to stand in the shadows. He wanted me to get into the cart with him, but I wouldn’t, and he drove away.”

  “I fear that he returned,” St. Ives said, “after you’d gone back up to your cottage. He drove away only because you’d seen him.”

  “Who was he, sir?”

  “His name is Ignacio Narbondo. If you see him again, Finn, don’t speak to him. Don’t go near him. Run. He’s the king of liars.”

  “I’ve heard you speak of this Narbondo, sir. And Jack Owlesby told me about him when I stayed at the house on Jermyn Street. Narbondo was the one as caused the trouble at Morecambe Bay.”

  “Yes,” said St. Ives. “The very man, come round again.”

  Finn stood staring for a moment, his hand at his forehead. “I should have come looking for you, sir, or Mrs. St. Ives. I knew it was long odds against anyone coming along to tell him of the London Road that time of night, but I didn’t think… I didn’t… I should have come up to the house.”

  “You couldn’t have known, Finn. I knew that Narbondo had been lurking roundabout, and I neglected to tell you. The blame in that regard is my own.”

  Finn was staring at St. Ives’s feet now, his face set. He touched his forehead again with trembling fingers, as if he couldn’t keep his hands still. “I didn’t know…” he said, as if trying to come to grips with his regret.

  “Finn,” St. Ives told him. “The guilt of the crime lies solely with Narbondo, and what’s left over I’ll take. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes,” Finn said, nodding his head too rapidly to be convincing.

  “Good man,” St. Ives said. “See to things, Finn, while I’m gone. I’ll be traveling in to London again.”

  A wagon came rattling along the wisteria alley now – Hasbro come home, and none too soon. St. Ives pressed Finn’s shoulder and turned away, running toward Hasbro, who reined up the horses.

  “We leave for London in half an hour,” St. Ives said without preamble. “Narbondo has taken Eddie.”

  ELEVEN

  TO LONDON

  Alice watched as the wagon moved away, dust rising from the wheels, carrying her husband from her yet again, his portmanteau sitting on the bed of the cart. He turned and waved one last time before the wagon flung itself up onto the road and flew out of sight, but she knew that his mind was already on London, and on the terrible need to make haste yet again. The last thing she said to him was, “Bring me his head.” But she knew now that it was her very anger at Narbondo that instigated vicious thoughts within her – anger at the hold that he had upon all of them, and especially upon her husband.

  He can save others, she thought, watching the dust settle, but he cannot save himself, the utterance of the Corinthian soldier coming into her mind unbidden.

  Bitter thoughts followed – recriminations that she wished weren’t there, that had been drawn from within her as out of a dark well. She cast them aside and thought of her own part in the crime. Better to be angry with herself. Why hadn’t she awakened? Wasn’t she supposed to have some instinctive bond with her children, whom she’d foolishly allowed to sleep alone in the gallery? Why that, of all things, when the devil was abroad in the neighborhood?

  “Gone again,” she said out loud, pushing the unanswerable questions aside and talking now to the empty afternoon.

  What if, she wondered – what if years ago, Langdon had taken a different turning in the road, and Narbondo and he had never been put into each other’s way? What then? Would some other tragedy or woe have stepped into the breach? It was apparently what the human multitudes were born for. That she might or might not have awakened in the night made little difference now. It was foolish to lament what had not happened any more than to worry about what might. There were a million possible alternatives that arose in a lifetime, and it had quite simply fallen out by dumb chance that she now had both a husband and a son to lose in a single stroke.

  She found a kerchief in her pocket and wiped the tears from her cheeks. She knew absolutely that unless she forced herself to remain even, with her wits intact, she would begin to sob, and that the sobbing would not answer, but would shatter what little command she had left of herself, and she would be no good to anyone. Though come to that, what good was she now?

  Her mind turned to Finn, and she looked toward his cottage, where for some reason the door stood half open. Langdon had told her that Finn blamed himself for Eddie’s kidnapping, and would certainly torture himself with it. And so the poison spreads, she thought. At that moment a gust of wind banged the door fully open. It swung back again, but didn’t shut, and it came to her that the cottage was empty.

  She began to run. Surely the boy wouldn’t do himself a mischief; he was steadier than that. She looked into the interior, not bothering to knock. “Finn!” she shouted,
but there was no answer. Drawers stood open and clothes lay on the bed where they had apparently been tossed. He had been in a hurry. She saw then that the lamp on the table by his bedside rested atop a sheet of foolscap, apparently left as a message, and in an instant she had snatched it up and read it hastily.

  I’ve gone into London to try my hand, the note said. I’m used to its ways having lived rough there for a time. I’m main sorry to have played my part so bad, but I mean to put it right. Finn Conrad.

  “God help us,” she said, sitting down hard on the bed and reading the note through again. Her breath caught in her throat, and her heart was fluttering, and for a moment she thought she would faint. She forced herself to breathe evenly, closed her eyes, and sat just so until something leapt onto the bed – Hodge, she discovered. The cat stared at her, as if to imply that there was more she should be doing.

  She stood up then and went out, tucking the note into her pocket and calling Hodge to follow her. She scooped him up, shut Finn’s door behind her, and turned toward the house, but she hadn’t taken ten steps before she heard a shout, and saw Bill Kraken heading toward her at a lopsided run, just then coming out of the hops orchard from the direction of Hereafter Farm. He waved at her, and she waited for him, even at a distance seeing trouble in his hurrying stride and in his face.

  Kraken bent over and clasped his knees with his hands, breathing hard, and then caught up with himself, took his cap off, and said, “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but I’ve come for the Professor. There’s a mort of trouble at the farm.”

  She felt a wave of something strangely like relief, the wild idea coming into her mind that Narbondo might still be lurking nearby. Eddie mightn’t be in London at all. St. Ives had taken the pistols, but there was still the fowling piece, which she could aim as well as anyone she knew, save perhaps Hasbro…

  She realized abruptly that Kraken was waiting for her, and she brought herself back from her own thoughts. “What trouble, Bill?”

  “Mother Laswell’s gone off to London a-looking for the Doctor. Bent on murder, she is. She’s sailing under the black flag, ma’am. No quarter. She’ll have his liver and lights on a plate or die a-trying, despite he’s her own son, blackguard that he is.”

  “To London, Bill? Are you certain?”

  “Yes, ma’am. She left me ashore, I don’t know how long ago. Hours maybe, for I was up ere the sun. I set to working in the garden before the day hottened up, and later on come in for breakfast a-looking for her, but she weren’t there. I looked whether she was still abed, for she had sat up half the night in a black fret, but the bed was empty and had been laid upon, but not in, if you follow me. She had laid there a-waiting, do you see, making up her mind like. Then in come Simonides, the hired boy, who said he took her to the train early-on in the dogcart, and was just then getting back. By then she was London bound, perhaps already in Tooley Street. The Professor will tell me what to do, I’m main certain of it.”

  “The Professor’s gone to London himself, Bill, on the same mission. Narbondo broke into the house in the night and kidnapped Eddie. Heaven knows when, exactly, or where he’s taken Eddie, but St. Ives and Hasbro are bound for London to look into it. They’ve been gone this past quarter hour by wagon, and wasting no time.”

  Kraken clapped a hand to his forehead and staggered backward like a drunken man. “London,” he muttered. “Blimey.” Abruptly he touched his hat, already turning away. He set out running again, back the way he had come, perhaps intending to run all the way into London. Alice stood speechless, watching him dwindle in the distance. The empty world seemed to be turning around her, and her mind revolved with it, unfixed on anything in particular.

  After a moment it settled again, and she made her way homeward, walking back into the quiet house, where she found Mrs. Langley at work, her face drawn and desperately unhappy. “I’m at wit’s end,” Mrs. Langley said to her. “I scarcely know which way to turn.”

  “Nor do I, Mrs. Langley. You couldn’t have anticipated any of this. It would be a great solace to me if you wouldn’t think badly of yourself. There’s the house and farm to see to, and just the two of us. Finn has gone into London. We’ll carry this corner of the world on our shoulders, and with the grace of God we can take up where we left off within a few days’ time.”

  “Into London? Finn?”

  “It seems that he wants to help the Professor find Eddie,” she told her, leaving out the hurtful details.

  Mrs. Langley shook her head. “If I thought I could help, ma’am, I’d go into London myself.”

  “I know you would. I’m quite certain of it. But you and I must do our part at home, it seems.”

  Cleo, already recovered, was studiously setting up soldiers, the clockwork elephant prepared to mow them down again. The breeze blew in through the open windows, the day slightly cooler than it had been – perfect weather, really, on what had been going to be a perfect day. It still was a perfect day in some larger sense, Alice thought, the clockwork world spinning along on its axis with complete indifference, birds hatching, calves foaling, her pike lurking in the deep water of the weir as it had time out of mind.

  Waiting wasn’t going to be easy, she thought. “I wonder if you’d like to go newting,” she said to Cleo, not really considering what she was asking until the words were out of her mouth, but realizing that she had made a decision. “Newting and frogging. We’ll bring a picnic.”

  “With biscuits,” Cleo said, marching the elephant up the hillside that had recently been the settee, but was now a mountain range. “Jam biscuits?”

  “And sandwiches, I should think.”

  “I’ll just put something up,” said Mrs. Langley, visibly bucking up. “We’ve some beautiful strawberries, and perhaps peaches. And a piece of that lovely York ham and a nice Stilton cheese.”

  “Would there be anything left of the deviled pork?”

  “Yes, ma’am. The pot’s half full. It’ll go bad soon enough if we don’t attend to it.”

  “Then it’s our duty to attend to it. You’ll come along, Mrs. Langley? Have you ever had your hands on a living newt?”

  “Oh dear me, yes, ma’am. I grew up by Shag’s Pond, in Derbyshire. The newts were fearsome thereabouts, with poisonous eyes, my old dad told me, but they’d flee away when they saw my sister and I coming along with nets and pails. Dear me, yes. But I don’t mean to…”

  “Nonsense. It’s settled. We’ll go on into Aylesford afterward for tea at the inn and supper after, with a nice bottle of wine to keep our spirits up. If we sit around like mopes we’ll compound the crime, and I refuse to do it. We’ll fight the dragon in our own way.”

  “What dragon?” Cleo asked. “The big fish?”

  “Yes, Cleo, the big fish. Fetch the nets and a bucket from the shed, if you will, and I’ll see how many pairs of waders and fishing poles we can muster.”

  Mrs. Langley and Cleo both disappeared, busy now. Alice thought of Eddie. She closed her eyes for a moment, listening to the clatter in the kitchen, and then she wiped away the tears and went out through the door to get on with the day.

  TWELVE

  THE QUEEN’S REST

  St. Ives looked again at his pocket watch, and was surprised to see that only ten minutes had passed since he had last done the same thing. They were rattling shrewdly along the nearly empty road, and yet they seemed to be taking forever about it. Orchards of pears and cherries fell away behind them, while plantations of chestnut and ash rose up to take their place and fell away in turn. Strawberry fields came and went. There were hop orchards that made their own small holding seem negligible by comparison, but all of these things passed out of his mind as they passed out of sight, and he returned inwardly to a dismal mental vision of London in all its vastness, its thousands of dark streets and courtyards and gin shops and lodging houses, the turmoil and hurry – such a confounding puzzle that it bred futility in the shadows of his mind.

  There was nothing confounding, it occurred to him m
orbidly, in a man taking his own life merely out of self-loathing, and he thought of Mother Laswell and the burden that she carried – one son dead, the other a murderer, and she unable and unwilling to forgive herself for having married a bad man. I believe that the entire business is nonsense: his words came back to him now, rekindling his regret, and he uttered a silent apology to the poor woman and a prayer for all of them, although it was cold comfort.

  “We’ve both missed our breakfast, sir,” Hasbro said, recalling St. Ives from his musings.

  St. Ives nodded, but said nothing.

  “I suggest stopping at the Queen’s Rest just ahead, sir, in Wrotham Heath, near the Archbishop’s manor. There’s no value in arriving in London unfed. Old Logarithm will want something, too.”

  “A delay would… unsettle me,” St. Ives said flatly.

  “Indeed, sir, although the delay would be momentary. It’s a coaching inn on the Greenwich Road, and in deference to travelers they put up food in parcels. Bread and cheese, meat pies, and bottled ale. I’ve availed myself of the fare on occasion, and it’s quite substantial. We’ll be happy to have it an hour from now.”

  “No doubt you’re correct,” St. Ives said. “I’ve got no appetite, but perhaps that’s not a virtue.”

  “No, sir, perhaps it’s not, if you’ll pardon my saying so. We’ll want our wits about us in London, and we’ll move more decisively if we’re carrying a hamper of food instead of an empty belly.”

  The Queen’s Rest soon came into view ahead, its heavily carved and brightly painted sign glowing with sunlight. On any other day it would have been a welcome sight to St. Ives, but this morning it meant nothing. Hasbro drew up in front of it, and the ostler came out of the adjacent stable and took the reins as Hasbro and St. Ives climbed down. St. Ives saw that a man was standing in the doorway of the inn. The man tipped his hat, and St. Ives nodded doubtfully in his direction, thinking that he had a suspicious look about him. He caught himself, realizing that he felt mean and low, stricken with a case of the dismals, as Tubby Frobisher would put it. His natural civility had abdicated along with his appetite and had left him with a vague stupidity and muddled thoughts.