by Sam Hurcom
‘I know. I know you did your best. And if the Constabulary come, they will too. I’m sorry to say this, but I don’t think they’ll find the man.’ He shrugged and stepped away. It was perhaps the last kick I needed, the disappointment of a bereaved father. I nodded, for I believed he was right. I moved from the bar toward the little door and the stairs. Solomon replaced the bottle of brandy and busied himself absently. It seemed he didn’t want to look at me.
‘Thank you, for all your hospitality,’ I said. ‘I’ll make sure you have full payment in the morning.’
With that I downed the last of my drink. My hand twitched as I set the glass on the bar. It tipped to its side, and before either Solomon or I could stop it, it fell and smashed on the floor behind the bar.
I apologised, tiredness now getting the better of me.
‘It’s fine, it’s fine.’ Solomon knelt down, collecting some of the shards. I meant to leave for I was sure I was causing the man great grief. As he came back up, I saw something gleam faintly around his neck. I hadn’t noticed it before; it had been tucked just below the hem of his vest. Now it hung before him as he spilt some of the broken glass onto the bar.
‘What’s that?’ I asked, trying to maintain the calmness in my voice.
He glanced at me confused, before following my eye line and looking down at his chest.
He took hold of the thin ring on the end of a silver metal chain.
‘Oh this!’ His voice was more jovial than mere moments before. ‘Was my wife’s. I just couldn’t let them bury it with her. Too precious.’
The ring was clearly of no great value, not adorned with any small jewels or the like. It was thin, dull and ill-shaped. I had seen this ring before, only then it had shone brightly in a developed negative. It had been made for slender fingers. For Betsan’s fingers.
When Solomon looked back at me I managed to feign a smile. He reciprocated. The silence hung for too long between us. I wanted desperately to reach for my gun.
‘These things are often too important to lose.’ I tapped my hand lightly on the bar. ‘I should get some rest.’
He didn’t reply. As I stepped through the door, I stopped myself. As foolish as it seems now, I wanted to be rid of any doubts. It took such an effort to maintain my composure and turn to stand before him once again. I spoke as nonchalantly as I could.
‘One thing dawned on me earlier – perhaps it is relevant. The soldiers, the wooden ones your boys had. Would you happen to know who made them?’
His crooked smile remained. ‘Can’t say I do. Is it important?’
He knew nothing of Lewis’ craft, had never received anything for his children. His children – he had no children.
I shook my head. ‘Perhaps. I’ll pass on my thoughts to the Constabulary tomorrow.’
Without another word I stepped away. I maintained a steady pace as I came to the bottom of the stairs and climbed a few upwards. Everything was pitch black. I took out my Enfield, pulled back the hammer.
When I turned something hard struck me in the jaw.
Then there was only deeper darkness still.
27
The Finest Act – June 23rd, 1904
I heard shuffling and the dull thud of a heavy weight as I shifted in and out of consciousness. Words were uttered, quiet yet harsh, biting and cruel. Something clattered and as I came around proper, I noticed the stale smell of bitters, the rotting of dank wood. I felt cold and damp all over. A pain that started as a needle point, a prick of hot lead being pressed against the skin of my upper left shoulder, began to spread and deepen in intensity. I writhed and groaned as I tried to relieve myself of the growing discomfort. It was then I realised my hands were bound behind me, the knots of rope around my wrists so tight, they had near stopped the circulation to my hands and fingers.
My jaw had been struck; it throbbed mercilessly. I tasted dried blood across my teeth and gums. My neck was stiff, and as I slowly opened my eyes, I realised I was looking down at the floor. A floor I recognised – the floor of Solomon’s cellar.
‘What … what’s happening …’
Bloodied saliva drooled from my lips. The shuffling, the clanking and knocking stopped suddenly. Footsteps slowly drew near, until a figure loomed before me. A pair of raggedy boots was all I could see as I stared down at the floor.
The cold steel of a gun barrel was pushed under my chin and raised steadily, forcing me to look upwards. Solomon looked down at me. His expression was cold, void of all emotion. Empty is perhaps the more fitting word, for in that moment it was as though nothing of a soul, or heart, or conscience dwelt within him.
His eyes gleamed, bold and bright by contrast to the dark and shrouded room. He looked at me with a hunger, with a perverse and deathly lust.
‘What the hell are you doing, man?’ I was confused, my words slow and slurred.
Solomon’s lips twitched ever so slightly.
He turned and stepped away. I watched after him, though it took a great effort, the pain from my jaw and head disorientating my vision. My neck and shoulders felt weak, and my head began to loll forwards as he reached the very shelf where I had developed my photographs on the other side of the cellar. He set my Enfield down with a clink and took hold of a large basin. When he threw the contents of cold water across my face and body in one quick thrust, I recoiled and gasped to life proper.
He didn’t say a word, turning his back to me and focusing on something I couldn’t see on the shelf. Shocked by my sudden start, I twisted my neck to my left and right, spotting a few candles propped and balanced on some crates and unopened barrels. I began recalling all that had happened: Lewis, the mill, returning to the inn, Betsan’s ring around Solomon’s neck. In a moment of anger and panic I cursed at him repeatedly, pulling hard at my wrists, writhing in the chair and even trying to stand though to no avail. He barely seemed to notice.
I tried to compose myself amidst all the pain and fury.
‘You. You all along.’
He didn’t turn to me.
‘This – all of this – won’t end well for you, Solomon.’ I winced as I spoke, the very act of speaking causing fresh pain to pulse from my jaw. Still, Solomon didn’t turn to look at me. He was working to fix something, tinkering quickly.
I began twisting my hands awkwardly to feel at my bonds. A thin rope had been wrapped around both wrists numerous times; I splayed and stretched my fingers.
‘They’ll come for you in time, man. Whatever you think you’re going to do, they’ll come for you in the end.’
‘How does this work?’ Solomon said quietly, frustrated. His heavy husk of a body blocked all sight of what he was working on, though in that moment I noticed my camera stand, fully erected close to the shelf. My case was lying open on the floor alongside it; my camera and few remaining plates had been removed.
‘Tell me how it works,’ he said again, his voice now louder. He turned to look at me, holding a glass quarter plate in hand. There on the shelf I spotted my camera, lying haphazardly on its side.
I didn’t answer him, but spoke with all the conviction I could muster.
‘Whatever you think this is, Solomon, you’re done. If you kill me, more and more police will flood this village. You won’t be able to hide for ever—’
He smacked a hand down hard against the shelf.
‘Tell me how this works, or I’ll make your end much slower than it needs be!’
His face was flushed, the sweat from his brow dribbling down like molten sulphur in the dimmed candlelight. His hand moved towards an array of tools and implements. I eyed a pair of tongs, a hammer, a thin butchering knife.
‘How did you get my camera? What do you want with it?’ I tried with great effort to hide the fear in my voice, knowing that I had not succeeded when Solomon smirked thinly.
‘I want to take your picture, Inspector.�
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To this day I shudder when I think of the way he looked at me.
‘I won’t tell you anything,’ I found myself uttering, ‘until you tell me about Betsan. About the murders of the children.’
His smile vanished in an instant. He reached clumsily across the desk, set his hand upon the handle of the hammer and thrust it in my direction.
‘I just couldn’t hide it from you in the end. Wearing that little bitch’s ring right under your nose was just too tempting!’ He took a step towards me, holding up the ring he still wore around his neck. ‘You really want to know what happened to her, don’t you?’
I didn’t answer, holding his gaze in silence. After a moment he stepped back to the little shelf and lazily tossed the hammer down. He continued to fiddle and poke at my camera, trying in vain to insert the glass plate, his oafish hands pulling and prising at wood and brass latches.
‘You should tell me how this works, Inspector,’ he said calmly. ‘In truth you owe me your life.’
I was baffled by what he meant. ‘Because you haven’t killed me yet?’
He shook his head, his face expressionless once more.
‘Because I could have killed you before. Because if I hadn’t stopped what I was doing, you’d be dead already.’
He set the camera down gently and began staring into the corner of the room. He nodded his head, clearly deep in thought, though I had no idea what was going through the man’s mind. He muttered something under his breath and began pulling, rather indelicately, on his lower lip.
‘How are you feeling now, Inspector? Has your fever passed?’
He still wasn’t looking at me, yet the way he stared absently across the room filled me with near as much dread as when he glared straight into my eyes.
‘This is all over, Solomon,’ I groaned in earnest. ‘Whether you kill me or not—’
‘When I first heard that an Inspector was coming to the village, I was worried,’ he cut in, his voice distant and hushed. ‘I’d wanted just to kill you. Cummings asked for you to stay here and the idea came to me.’
He nodded some more, his cheek quivering as his lip curled in a dreadful smile.
‘I felt quite excited the day you arrived. Truth be told I felt happy. I’d never poisoned a man before – not the way I usually do things.’
I looked at him in bemusement until the truth of it all dawned on me.
‘You … you’ve been poisoning me?’
He didn’t answer, his smile only widening.
It all made sense then – the suddenness of my illness, the severity of my fever. I’d thought it mere coincidence, an unfortunate case of luck that I had become so ill at the near outset of the enquiry. How foolish I had been for not seeing it sooner. How foolish I had been for so many things.
‘The fever, the bloody fever was all your doing!’ Anger took hold of me and I cursed aloud, much to Solomon’s pleasure. ‘How did you do it? My food, my drink, no doubt?’
He nodded, setting his gaze on me then.
I shook my head, clenching my eyes shut.
‘The hallucinations, everything I’ve seen …’
‘A side effect I’m afraid,’ Solomon muttered dryly. ‘The belladonna plant is called deadly nightshade for so many reasons.’
He stepped over to me quickly, moving around the chair and roughly grabbing hold of my bound wrists. I turned my neck painfully to watch him in my peripheral vision; I saw him crouch downwards, before feeling a clammy hand slowly move up my back to the base of my neck. His fingers rubbed my skin gently.
‘You were so scared in your room, Inspector, the night you came to this cellar and made your photographs.’ He squeezed my neck lightly, and it was all I could do to keep still and not wriggle desperately from his awful grip. ‘Did you really think she was with you in the room that night, or the next? Did you really think you were with a ghost?’
‘Why keep me alive?’ I muttered, holding my voice steady, pushing aside any thoughts of this madman standing over me as I lay, near death, in bed. ‘Why not simply kill me then?’
Solomon didn’t answer for what felt an age, his hand pulsing on the back of my neck, his breath grazing softly against my skin. He stood up suddenly and moved back towards the shelf and my camera. I tried to hold in a sigh of relief.
‘Interest,’ he replied then simply. ‘You were interesting. And this,’ he pointed at the camera. ‘I needed to know more about this. Seeing you down here, seeing those pictures of Betsan’s body …’ With his back to me he fell silent and continued prising at my camera, opening the rear compartment with some force.
‘You’ll break it doing that,’ I said quite truthfully to him.
He hit his hand down against the shelf again before grabbing at the hammer. For a moment I thought he would be unable to contain his rage and would bring it down onto the camera, smashing it into a thousand pieces. But he didn’t, instead holding it steady as he yelled across the cellar to me.
‘Tell me how this works!’
I shook my head gingerly. ‘Tell me about Betsan.’
It was rash of me to try to barter, though in that moment something seemed to snap inside the man. He cackled, wailed aloud and hit the side of his head with his free hand. He came back across the room towards me.
‘What do you want to know?’ he chuckled, doing all he could to contain his laughter. ‘Do you want to know what it felt like strangling her, or whether I started burning her whilst she was still alive?’
His body shuddered as he spoke gleefully. His eyes fluttered each time I unwittingly pulled at the bonds around my wrists; the corners of his mouth trembled. He enjoyed my struggle, my pain, and I tried my best to conceal it then, for I wanted to give him no satisfaction.
‘Try to get comfortable, Inspector—’
‘I am no bloody Inspector,’ I growled, glaring towards him, spitting blood from my mouth.
‘That’s right,’ he said with feigned astonishment. ‘You wanted me to call you Thomas, didn’t you?’
Our conversation in the bar upstairs, what I knew now was all a sham. I’d let my emotions get the better of me, sitting across from a supposed father in grief, a broken man reliving the greatest trauma. How small and meagre I felt then at the manner to which I had been conned, how easily I had been dragged into the lies of Solomon’s wicked charade.
‘Whose children were they, Solomon? Was there a reason you killed them?’
He pulled absently on his lower lip and shook his head.
‘The Morgans. Nice family, nice wife.’
‘Did you enjoy seeing them grieve too?’
He nodded enthusiastically. ‘They didn’t stay very long after it happened. Too afraid, I think. I was lucky, really – Vaughn is an idiot; some of the labourers gave me an alibi unknowingly.’
I shook my head despondently. ‘Were they the first you killed?’
Solomon cackled dreadfully. ‘I lived in London for many years, Insp— Thomas. Sorry. Lots of things to do in London.’ He pointed at me with a wry smile. ‘No doubt we were both there at the same time.’
I didn’t say a word.
‘When father died, I returned here, took over the inn. Found it hard to shake old habits, though …’
His smile vanished in an instant. He glared at me with anger and scorn, pointing the hammer he held in his hand towards my camera behind him.
‘I want to know how this works! I want it!’
I admit I lurched at his sudden change in demeanour. I shook my head, nonetheless, doing all I could to learn more from him.
‘I’ll show you in good time, Solomon, first you tell me about Bets—’
He lunged forwards, grabbing me by the hair and shoving me so that I, and the chair I sat on, clattered to the floor. Standing over me he bent down and yelled in my ear.
‘I tell you what
to do, Thomas! I tell you what to do.’
I was stifling a scream, for I had landed hard on my shoulder and the pain was now excruciating. Solomon pulled up the chair roughly and began dragging it across the stone floor to the shelf; he barked and cursed as we moved. There, he made me face the camera, striking me hard against the back of my head with his open palm.
‘Now then, before this gets any nastier, tell me how this works.’
I breathed in deeply, my entirety shaking.
‘Not until you tell me about Betsan.’
He finally nodded in resignation. Calmly he set down the hammer on the bench and reached for my revolver. He placed the cold barrel to my temple. I did all I could to hold still – if this was my end I wouldn’t scream or plead for mercy. It would give Solomon far too much satisfaction. Even as he twitched his hand, as though he were about to pull the trigger, I didn’t bat an eye.
‘She came to the inn, you know,’ he said, amusedly, pulling the gun away from me. ‘Came to me that night.’
I craned my neck and looked at him. He was toying absently with the revolver, the wicked smile returned to his face.
‘You need to be careful with that,’ I said flatly.
‘I didn’t lie to you completely,’ he continued. ‘The inn was full till about nine that night. I was just tidying everything away when Betsan came in. She seemed a little upset, was looking for Geraint. When I said I hadn’t seen him I offered her a drink to calm her down. We sat talking for a little while. When I tried to be nicer to her, she got nasty.’ He gestured to the cellar around us. ‘It wasn’t long till I’d managed to get her down here.’
I closed my eyes and shook my head. She’d been murdered here, right below the place I’d slept, right where I had sat and developed the pictures of her corpse. I looked about the floor.
‘I had to conceal the scorch marks; nearly choked myself to death burning her like I did. And the blood, of course.’ Solomon nodded toward a stack of barrels on my left before setting the gun down on the shelf. He tapped delicately on the top of my camera. ‘If I’d had this, I could have shown you how she looked the moment before she died.’ He sneered, before grabbing at the back of my neck and gripping tight. ‘You’ll show me how this works now.’