The Aylesford Skull

by James P. Blaylock

  “Nothing for me, thank you,” St. Ives said. “I don’t mean to turn down a pleasant offer, but we’re rather in a hurry, I’m afraid, and I for one need my sensibilities intact. We’ve urgent business to transact before we have the luxury of rest.”

  Hasbro waved the offer away as well, at which Merton said that perhaps they wouldn’t mind if he took a dram. He poured a measure of whisky into a cut glass snifter, tipped a bit of water into it from a nearby bottle, and took an appreciative swallow and sat down. “I needed an excuse to be quits with the day,” he said, heaving a sigh. “How can I help you two?”

  “We have business with Dr. Ignacio Narbondo,” St. Ives said flatly.

  The smile left Merton’s face. He set the glass down on a table, sat back in his chair, pressed his hands together in front of his mouth and blew air through them. “I scarcely know the man,” he said.

  “His own mother said the same thing to me just last night,” St. Ives said, “but you and I have both had dealings with him in one way and another.”

  “Not for a good long time,” Merton said.

  “We talked to Mr. Slocumb,” Hasbro told him. “Looked him up directly we got into the City.”

  Merton blinked at him, considering this.

  “He was of your same mind,” St. Ives put in. “When it comes to Narbondo, the less said the better. I understand that fully. But I have no time for scruples, Harry. My son has been kidnapped by the Doctor, early this morning. We believe him to be somewhere in Spitalfields. We’ll do our best to run him to ground tonight. You cannot help us there, of course, but I discovered at Slocumb’s that the mystery is deeper than I had thought. Under coercion he revealed the business of the lost steam launch and the contraband you attempted to smuggle into London…”

  “I deny it!” Merton cried. “Smuggling, forsooth! Slocumb has misinformed you. He was ever the ungrateful…”

  “No, sir, he has not misinformed us, and he seems to me to be a singularly forthright man. I threatened him, do you see? I offered to reveal the details of the Joseph Banks fraud to the Royal Society. That would have finished him, and I believe it would finish you.”

  Merton looked at him in astonishment. “You’re a difficult man, Professor. I had no idea that an old friend of your standing would fling such a threat in my face after…”

  “His son has been kidnapped by a murderer, sir,” Hasbro said, his voice like a sword thrust. “The boy’s life hangs in the balance.”

  Merton seemed to catch his breath now, and he blinked heavily several times before picking up his glass and draining the contents at a gulp. “Just so,” he said. “I quite understand. I meant no…”

  “We’re both in a difficult position,” St. Ives told him, “and might both do better if we were allies in this. I assure you that I have no distaste for honest smuggling when the need arises. I might ask you to arrange some such thing for me some day. What was it that the Doctor wanted transported into London?”

  “A round dozen barrels of coal, taken out of a Neolithic cave very near the Normandy coast.”

  “Coal? He could have purchased a hundredweight for a few shillings, delivered to his door.”

  “This was… out of the ordinary coal, you might say. Lignite coal, to be certain, but an admixture of carbon, sulfur, old human bones, and other organic debris. Ancient human bones, I might add, kept dry and well preserved by the atmosphere in the cave. There was great expense involved; you would scarcely credit it if I told you.”

  “Your expense, I understand, once the coal was lost, and not Narbondo’s.”

  “Yes,” he said unhappily. “The business will come close to ruining me before it’s done.”

  “I believe that Narbondo swindled you, Harry. I don’t know quite how, but I intend to find out before I’m through. Indeed, I believe that you and I are caught up in the same net. If I can save my son from his grasp, I’ll see whether I can recover something for you into the bargain.”

  “Well,” said Merton, helping himself to more whisky, “I would take that as a kind gesture, certainly I would.”

  “Good,” said St. Ives. “Then tell me one last thing. Have you heard of an object known as the Aylesford Skull?”

  “Heard of it, yes. I have no idea of its existence, though rumors have arisen over the years. I have my ear to the ground, you know, and I hear all manner of things. To the best of my knowledge the story of the skull is fabulous, although if it existed it would be worth a fortune, and not a small one. No one has seen it or admitted to possessing it. And there’s never yet been a collector who didn’t eventually boast about his treasures, especially something of that magnitude. Human vanity requires it. If it were in someone’s collection, I would know.”

  “But something like it, perhaps?” St. Ives asked. “A different example of a skull-lamp, so to speak?”

  “Yes, certainly. Such things have been in the hands of collectors for hundreds of years. I’ve heard that they change hands for monstrous sums. The skull of the Duke of Monmouth was so altered. His head, you’ll recall, had been sewn back onto his body after his beheading in order for the corpse to sit for a portrait by Benson. It was removed again afterward and sent to France, where a renowned alchemist fashioned it into such a lamp at enormous expense, allegedly financed by some member of the family, possibly the Earl of Doncaster, although that’s mere rumor. It’s true, however, that the French are particularly keen on them. Marie Antoinette’s skull resides in a particular library in Paris, to my certain knowledge.”

  “To what uses are these put, then? Merely decorative?”

  “In a sense, yes,” said Merton. “They are so contrived as to project an image of the person the skull belonged to. It’s the image that’s decorative, if you follow my meaning.”

  “An image like that of a so-called magic mirror?”

  “Considerably more interesting. A moving image, I’m told, much sought after by spiritualists and by people who study the demonic. I’m afraid they’re rather out of my line, though – quite beyond my means despite being of varying quality. If they function at all – cast even a meager representation of a ghost – they had best be kept in a vault for fear of theft.”

  St. Ives nodded. “Answer one last question if you please. Would the skull of a child be more valuable to those who fabricate these lamps than that of an adult human being?”

  “Your own son?” Merton asked.

  “Just so.”

  He shook his head at the thought. “Childhood is a time of deep and changing emotion, great wonder, the spirit at its brightest. So, in a word, yes, although a head taken from any living body is similarly energized. It’s a matter of degree, I suppose.”

  “A victim of the guillotine, perhaps?” Hasbro asked.

  “Indeed,” Merton said. “And I’ll remind you that even a skilled fabricator is only occasionally successful. The reward is great, and there are many inept bunglers who hope one day to succeed. The traffic in potentially useful human skulls is vast, immense sums spent, the results for the most part coming to nothing.”

  “Thank you, Harry,” St. Ives said. “I’m sorry to have threatened you. You can understand my need, however.”

  “Indeed,” Merton said. “You might put your questions to our good friend William Keeble, by the way.”

  St. Ives looked at him with evident surprise. “William Keeble cannot conceivably have any dealings with the sort of people who collect or purvey such things.”

  “Oh, indeed not, Professor. I don’t mean to blacken the man’s reputation. But he successfully miniaturized what is referred to as a Ruhmkorff lamp. You’re familiar with them, no doubt? I’m told that the tiny Keeble variation is one of the marvels of the age, although I haven’t seen one myself. It’s said to sit neatly in the palm of one’s hand, and yet it projects an extraordinarily bright light.”

  “And so it might lie within the cranial cavity of these reprehensibly contrived skulls?”

  “Just so. I was given to believe t
hat the commission came from a highly placed personage, although there was no mention of names, as you can imagine. Keeble might easily have been ignorant of the use that the lamp would be put to. He’s not a worldly man, Professor.”

  Hasbro rose from his chair now and nodded toward the street. St. Ives glanced out, but saw nothing of interest. The evening outside was busy enough, with people on foot and carriages passing along Lower Thames Street. Stepping away from their small circle of light into the dimness of the ill-lit shop, Hasbro moved off silently, Merton and St. Ives watching as he made his way toward the shelter of an immense curio cabinet that cast a particularly dense shadow at the corner of the window. After a moment he retraced his steps, sat down in his chair, and said, “It’s our old friend George, sir.”

  “You’re certain?” St. Ives asked him. “The last we saw of him he was unhorsed and flying into the shrubbery.”

  “He’s making no effort to conceal himself.”

  “Tenacious, bold fellow, our George. Alone, is he?”

  “Yes, sir. Apparently, although it seems doubtful that he’s as bold as that.”

  “He means to follow us, then, and not attack us, you mean?”

  “Indeed – has been following us, obviously, since we lost sight of him on the Pilgrims Road.”

  Merton was blinking at both of them. “Attack you? I don’t mean to hurry you away, but I’m late for an appointment. Oh my, yes, very late. Mrs. Merton will flay me alive with a serpent. I regret being inhospitable, but…”

  “Quite right,” St. Ives told him. “We’re also on the wing.”

  “I’ll just slip out the back,” Hasbro said, “and over the wall. Perhaps we can collar our man and have an informative chat.”

  St. Ives nodded. “I’ll go out through the front door in two minutes’ time. We would be fools, however, to allow George to distract us as he has in the past. If we cannot collar him, we’ll let him go about his business and we’ll go about ours. We’ll see him again, and soon, I believe.” He watched as Hasbro disappeared toward the rear of the shop, and began mentally to count the seconds in the efficient manner he had learned as a schoolboy: one elephant, two elephants, three elephants…

  Merton rose from his chair, bent over the back of it, and pulled out several painted sign-boards, choosing one from among them. “On Holiday,” it read. “I wish you the greatest luck in finding your son, Professor, and forgive me for reminding you of the promise you made to me this evening in regard to the money that was, I’m certain, stolen from me. I’m fearful that I’ve once again put my head in the noose. I believe you know the whereabouts of my second establishment?”

  “Unless it has moved locations in the past two years,” said St. Ives, starting in on the second sixty elephants.

  “No, sir, it has not. I would very much like to know the results of your endeavors. It would give me the greatest pleasure to learn that Narbondo has been knocked on the head.”

  “We’re of a like mind,” St. Ives said, shaking Merton’s hand. He walked toward the door with twenty elephants to spare, preparing himself for the possible chase. George would find it curious, perhaps, that he was coming out alone, but if his curiosity gave him a moment’s pause, St. Ives would take advantage of it.

  He heard the key turn in the lock behind him as soon as he was through the door, and the “On Holiday” sign-board clacked against the glass. There stood George, right enough, lounging in a shadowy doorway opposite, half shrouded by fog. St. Ives saw Hasbro step out of the byway onto the street, and in that instant St. Ives sprinted hard toward the relevant doorway, dodging around a carriage and nearly knocking over a crossing sweeper who offered to rid the path of horse manure. George was already afoot, however, dashing east along the river toward the Old Swan Pier, disappearing up a narrow, fogbound alley. St. Ives and Hasbro, running side by side now, dodging pedestrians, gained the mouth of the alley and saw the moving shadow just then cutting out of sight between two buildings. They followed warily, listening to their own footfalls on the cobbles until they arrived at the recess between the buildings.

  “Easy does it,” a voice said, and they saw George’s face lit by a match that he touched to the bowl of his pipe, drawing the flame downward. He leaned against the sweating bricks of a building, in no particular hurry now. His face had been torn open, probably when he had been thrown from his horse, and was patched with a strip of bloodstained sticking plaster. Nothing in his demeanor suggested the pleasant bumpkin from the Queen’s Rest. He had been a consummate actor. “I was sent by the Doctor to parlay, gentlemen,” he said, “since you weren’t given to it on the road this morning.”

  “Weren’t given to it?” St. Ives said, immediately angered. “It was more in the line of murder than a parlay.”

  “But who did the murdering? Poor Badger’s dead after that caper in the tree, stupid sod, but it was you who knocked him straightaway off the back of the wagon.”

  “He held a knife in his hand, which meant that he badly wanted to be knocked off the wagon. And if memory serves, it was you who ran him down, and it was Fred who pointed a pistol at us.”

  “Meant for persuasion, not murder, but mayhaps you’re in the right of it. I’d have done something the same if the Badger had dropped onto the back of my wagon. You’re wondering what I’m doing now, though. I’ve got no knife in my hand.”

  “Your misfortune, perhaps,” St. Ives said.

  Hasbro put his hand under his coat and sidestepped two paces deeper into the passage so that George was between them, or near enough.

  George whistled, and there were answering whistles from back the way they’d come, and from farther on into the gloom of the passageway. “I haven’t come alone, guv’nor,” he said. “I’m to deliver a message from the Doctor, and then go on my way. You’re to think on it.”

  “Deliver it, then, and be gone.”

  “The Doctor humbly offers the life of your son for the sum of fifty thousand sovereigns. No negotiation permitted. You have until tomorrow morning to come to a decision.”

  “And if I do not?”

  “You will, your honor. I know it to be true.”

  “On what authority?”

  George took the pipe out of his mouth and banged it against the edge of his fist, the coal falling out onto the ground, where it continued to glow. He slid the pipe into the pocket of his trousers, dusted his hands together, and then whistled again, twice, which meant, possibly, that he knew he was in dangerous waters, at the edge of the maelstrom, and that he wanted his friends to know the same. Again the answering whistles, twice each. St. Ives held very still, listening for approaching footfalls, but heard little beyond the distant traffic from Thames Street and shipping along the river.

  “On the authority that you want your son safe. And that you’re not keen to make the wrong choice and then have to explain yourself to the missus. No, sir, you wouldn’t want that. I’m a married man myself, who had a son of my own, and I know. That would be middling hard, it would indeed.”

  “Your wife would almost certainly be elated if I were to kill you where you stand.”

  He shrugged. “That’s as may be. But I’m merely the messenger, sir, and my message is that little Eddie won’t be safe unless you agree to the Doctor’s terms.”

  “In what way not safe? Say what’s in your mouth, sir, and keep my son’s name out of it.”

  “Right. The Doctor said to tell you that he’s got a customer who wants one of the skulls, sir, that casts ghosts. This man will pay the same sum as the Doctor is asking of you. But the Customer, so-called, doesn’t care what little boy is the cat’s paw, if you follow me. It needn’t be your son. That’s what the Doctor put into my mouth to say.”

  “The Customer,” St. Ives said, the word being suddenly loathsome to him. He stared at the man, contemplating his death, and George, seeing it in his eyes, looked furtive, ready to bolt. St. Ives felt a hand on his arm – Hasbro, who shook his head meaningfully. The moment passed, St. Ives forcing
his anger downward, out of his mind. “Tell the Doctor,” he said at last, “that I’ll consider his offer. Tomorrow morning, do you say? How am I to assemble that sum this evening? The thing is impossible.”

  “Eight o’clock sharp on the morrow. Corner of Thrawl Street and Brick Lane, Spitalfields. Bring a token sum – something serious, mind you – to put on the barrelhead.”

  “I’ll have to see that my son is safe.”

  “Agreed. There’ll be a man there who you won’t know, and others you won’t see. He’ll wear a red kerchief. Follow him, and he’ll tell you what you need to do. You’ll have time to find the rest of the nuggets, if you’re quick about it. Meanwhile, the lad’s safe, eating rashers and eggs. And he’ll stay safe – aye, and your little daughter, too, so says the Doctor – if you gather up the boy and go on your way, back to Kent, and out of the Doctor’s purview, so to say.”

  He paused a moment, something coming into his face as if he were considering, and in a low voice he said, “I believe it’s on the up and up – that the Doctor will do as he says.”

  He whistled three times sharp, and then turned on his heel and walked past Hasbro, away down the passage, where he was quickly swallowed by the darkness and fog.

  There were no answering whistles now – no need for them; the thing was done. Hasbro and St. Ives stood alone in the darkness for another moment, and then walked briskly up to Cannon Street, where they hailed a hansom cab, bound for Smithfield.

  EIGHTEEN

  THE ROOKERY

  The street market lay near Tower Hill, a hundred stalls more or less – cobblers and tea dealers and meat sellers and dealers in household objects, stationery, dry goods, walking sticks, spectacles, fruits and vegetables, hot chestnuts, and general whatnot – the stalls thrown up on the instant along the street, the doors standing open in adjacent shops. Because of the fog the booths were already lit by gas lamps or candles, or with the bloody red light of heavily smoking grease lamps. Tonight there were crowds afoot, looking for bargains and buying night-time suppers to eat out of hand. There was the sound of organ music on the air and a general shouting. A hat was mysteriously knocked off an old gentleman’s head and snatched up by a boy of five or six, who ran off pell-mell through the crowds, carrying his prize. A man in a nearby stall shouted for someone to stop the boy, which Finn might easily have done as the thief raced past, but instead he watched in amusement as the boy disappeared in the murk down toward the river. He wasn’t surprised to hear the man in the stall commiserating with the irritated, hatless old gentleman, offering to sell him a replacement at half price, a hat very much like the one he had lost, although of superior make, a prime article, worth three times what he was asking. Then minutes from now the boy would return with the hat he had carried away, and the hat seller’s stock would be perpetually renewed. It was an old dodge, but the bare-headed gentleman could afford a few shillings for a hat, Finn thought, whereas the boy needed some part of those shillings for his supper, if he were to have any supper at all.