Luther returned with a piece of paper that had been folded several times. “Give it to Mr. Corbett,” she instructed. Matthew took the paper and opened it. Scribed upon it in a neat, small and concise handwriting were six lines.
He read aloud: “A gauntlet thrown,/ and D.own I.t fell…” He had to comment on the punctuation marks before he went on: “Interesting use of periods behind the ‘D’ and the ‘I’.”
“Very interesting,” said Lady Puffery.
He continued. “Seek Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos/ at the midnight bell./ Come test your fate and dare to ask/ what lies beneath the gilded mask.” He scanned the lines once more before he looked up. “Gilded mask? Albion?”
“Albion, or someone posing as such. Along with it in the envelope was a guinea coin.”
“He wishes you to print this?”
“What else? We’re setting it up for the next issue.”
Again Matthew studied the lines. A bit of his interest and reading of Greek mythology surfaced. “The three names. Sisters, I think.” He frowned, going through the overfilled filing cabinets of his mind. “Let’s see…Clotho…I believe…was one of the mythological sisters of Fate. Of course…Albion spells that out. ‘Test your fate’, he says. Yes, I recall. Clotho spun the thread of life, Lachesis drew the lots and determined how long a person would live, and Atropos…ah, yes. Atropos chose how someone would die by cutting the thread of life with her shears.”
“This is all moon talk to me!” Keen huffed.
“Moon talk or not,” said Matthew. “This is a challenge directed to someone. ‘A gauntlet thrown’, he says. Thrown to whom?”
“Obviously,” said Lady Puffery, “he expects it to be read in the Pin by that someone.”
Matthew directed his attention to that word.
That single word.
Right there, upon the paper.
The word ‘fell’.
Whenever and wherever he saw that word, however it was used, he couldn’t help but feel a little twinge of unease as if someone, somewhere, had just stepped upon his grave.
“The three sisters,” he said, mostly to himself. “That must be the Tavern of the Three Sisters. The same place Albion wished to meet me, by the way. Albion is making a challenge to this person to meet him there. But…how will the person know he’s meeting Albion unless he already knows who Albion is? And he’s not giving a specific date or time…just saying, after midnight. Unless the date and time are hidden in code? A request: may I copy this down on a piece of paper and keep it?” She gave him paper and a quill. When he was done he returned the original to Lady Puffery and folded the copy into his pocket, having digested as much of its innards as he could currently manage.
She refolded the original. Then she picked up the pistol, opened a side drawer of her desk, put it in and closed the drawer.
“You do realize,” she told him, “that the Monster of Plymouth must live on awhile longer.”
“I’m sure he must be compelled to kill again, and many more times, and each more brutal and shocking than the one before?”
“Of course.” There was a devilish spark in her eye. “Your public demands it.”
“How will the story end?”
“If you’re not captured and hanged by the neck at Newgate Prison before you can get yourself out of this fine box of thorns, the Monster of Plymouth will likely be hunted through the winter, and in the spring—depending on what else rears its head—you will be shot by a little boy who has come to the defense of his younger sister while their mother and father lie bleeding and nearly dead. Mortally wounded but yet as strong as Satan, you will climb to the rooftops to attempt your escape, and in trying to evade the constables by climbing into a chimney you will fall into an industrial furnace and your body be burned to atoms.”
Matthew nodded. “I like that. Can I purchase a subscription?”
“Hm!” she said. “Subscriptions! Now there’s an idea!”
“Moony!” said Keen. “A thousand times moony!”
“We’ll be on our way, then,” Matthew said. “Thank you for your time and good luck in your endeavors. Thank you also for showing me that letter and allowing me to copy it. I find that a very interesting thing to ponder.”
“To ponder is one thing,” she said. “To supply an answer is altogether another.” She stood up from her chair. “I sincerely hope the reign of the Monster of Plymouth ends in that fiery furnace. In the meantime, good luck to Matthew Corbett.”
Fuel for the furnace, Matthew thought. It was going to get him one way or another. He said goodbye to Esther Rutledge and Samuel Luther, and he and Keen left the office. He had more questions than before. The rain had lessened to a nasty, irritating drizzle, the air smelled of wet horses and their manure, and now Keen was thankful for the coach and its driver awaiting them at the curbside.
“That was a damned strange visit,” said Keen as they walked to the coach. “Lord Puffery a woman! Who would’ve believed it?”
“No one, and no one will if you tell it, either.”
“I won’t tell it. But another thing…stranger still than hearin’ Josh’s name…that thing about Cable Street.”
They reached the coach. The driver tipped his water-logged tricorn at them, for this was just a day’s work.
“The hospital there?” Matthew asked as Keen opened the door. “What was strange about that?”
“Bugger it all, but Josh went crazy on that Velvet, and we tried to tie him down to give him the cure.”
“Yes, Pie told me.”
“Did she tell you that when Josh jumped out the window of a three-story buildin’, he came down on Cable Street?”
“No, she didn’t.”
“Right there’s where he landed.” Keen had paused halfway into the coach to relate this. “Ain’t that strange…hearin’ Josh’s name like that, and hearin’ the name of the same street where he died?”
“Yes.” Matthew had so many questions in his mind his brain felt as swollen as the coachman’s hat. He let Keen get into the coach, and then he said, “Rory, I’m not going back with you.” He held up a hand before the other man could speak, because the words were near bursting from Keen’s mouth and his eyes had flared like dangerous torches. “Listen to me, please. I have things to do that I can’t do in Whitechapel. I’ve got to find my acquaintance who’s the assistant to the head constable and—”
“God A’mighty!” Keen said. “There’s that stink of the Old Bailey again!”
Matthew rolled on: “And let him know what’s been—”
Suddenly he stopped, for with mention of the Old Bailey the memory of a well-dressed, soft-spoken young man with light-colored hair and wearing a pair of square-lensed spectacles came to him.
Steven, the clerk.
“What’s wrong with you?” Keen snapped at him. “Somebody pee in your porridge?”
“Maybe so.”
“Huh?”
“Just thinking. Trying to figure something out that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Good for you. So you’re leavin’ me to fend for myself with the old woman, are you? Damn it, Matthew! I thought you’d help me set her straight about why we hired the coach! Let her know about Albion and all. She’ll skewer my ass for this, if you ain’t there to back me up.”
“You’re smart, you can come up with something.”
“Like hell I can! Mother Deare can smell a lie six leagues from the Sabbath!”
That name nearly put him on the cinderblack paving stones.
“Who?” His voice sounded like that of a stranger choking on a bitter lemon.
“The boss. Calls herself Mother Deare. Mother to a snake in swaddlin’, if she ever was, scares the shittles out’a me but I can’t show it in front a’ nobody.”
Now Matthew’s voice was truly lost. He heard the sounds of London rising around him as if it were a gigantic creature gathering itself in mad power and evil fury to crush him into dust.
“Where to, gentlemen?” asked the sodden coachman. The
horses snorted and wanted to start pulling.
“I won’t stand in your way if you want to leave,” Keen said. “But after you stand with me and square it with the old woman. I could get in terrible trouble, spendin’ this kind of coin. I swear it, Matthew. Oath or not, you can take a powder.”
“Mother Deare,” Matthew rasped.
“That’s right.” Keen blinked. “Oh Jesus, don’t tell me you know her!”
Matthew looked up into the drizzle for a few seconds. Up against the dark, slowly-moving clouds a parliament of ravens crossed the sky.
With an effort he focused his attention upon Keen again. “You get the White Velvet from her, is that correct?”
It was obvious that this was the moment to come clean on that subject. “Yes,” he answered, with a sour twist to his mouth.
“Then you should know that you and the Broodies are in the employ of Professor Fell.”
“What? No, Matthew, you’re wrong. Mother Deare’s her own company.”
Matthew lifted his tattooed hand to urge the coachman’s patience. “She works for Fell, and I can swear to that. You work for her. See how that circles? I imagine the Broodies is not the only gang Fell’s using to get the Velvet on the streets.”
“All right then, whatever you say. But she’ll be along anytime now to collect her due and go over the book. I’m thinkin’ that if you offed one of Fell’s people, you ain’t too well appreciated by Mother Deare? That is, if you’re on the level.”
“I am. Mother Deare would know me on sight.”
“Please…listen…I ain’t as good a thinker as you. Hell, none of the Broodies are!”
“You sell yourself short.”
“No…hear me out. Just come back with me and help me cook up a story that she’ll buy, and it’ll have to be a good one. Then you can leave and go see your good friend the flippin’ Pope, for all I care. If the old woman shows up a’fore you leave, we’ll cover for you. I swear it.”
What was the right thing to do? Matthew asked himself. He was in, as Esther Rutledge had said, a fine box of thorns, and it seemed he’d put Rory in one as well. Getting them both out was going to take some very careful maneuvering. Should he do it, or should he go on his way?
Matthew said to the coachman, “Back to Whitechapel, same place we hailed you.” He got in and closed the door. He settled himself on the cracked leather seat and stared balefully at his companion. The thought more drug than drink was prominent in his mind.
The name of the lately-deceased Dr. Jonathan Gentry, he of the sawn-off head and delicacy to an octopus, had also come to mind.
As had the book of poisons, drugs and concoctions Gentry had created in support of Fell’s efforts, one of which was called the “Juice of Absence”, and had rendered its creator insensate while his head was being cut off in Fell’s dining hall on Pendulum Island.
He recalled part of Gentry’s description of the juice: it removes one…takes him away…eases the mind and deadens the nerves…causes one to leave this realm of unhappy discord, and enter another more pleasant…
“I want you to tell me everything you know about the White Velvet,” Matthew said. “I mean everything. Hold nothing back, do you understand?”
“It’s a fuckin’ liquor, is all! A potent gin, to be sure, and I regret it took Josh away, but…it’s just a drink.”
Matthew shook his head. “It’s much more than that. It’s a drug.”
“Yeah…well…I suppose any liquor’s kind of a drug, ain’t it?”
“Not like this one. It has something different in it. Some additive…some ingredient that makes a person nearly insane for the want of it.” Matthew remembered the desperate girl grabbing the bars of the prison coach’s window that night. She had wanted to bargain her body for “a sip of the velvet”. And Pie talking about Joshua Oakley: Pert soon he looked like a walkin’ skeleton and all he gave a damn about was gettin’ another sip.
“What d’you make of it?” Keen asked, uncomfortably.
“I make of it,” said Matthew, “that Professor Fell has a new enterprise, and it is centered on drugging an entire nation.”
Four
The Things We Do
for Love
Twenty-Three
MATTHEW stood in the Broodie cellar, looking at the crates of blue bottles and the casks of what he was certain was Professor Fell’s latest plot upon the world.
“But you can’t be…like…bettin’ your life on it, can you?” Keen asked, standing beside him with Pie on Matthew’s other flank. All of them held lanterns, uplifted to throw light upon the holdings. “I mean…about it all bein’ drugged. You can’t say for—what would be the right way to put it, Pie?”
“One hundred percent,” she supplied.
“Let me ask both of you one question,” Matthew said. “Would you want to drink a whole bottle of it?”
Neither answered.
“Well, why not?” Matthew prompted. “If it’s only gin, perhaps with a high alcohol content, why wouldn’t you want to?”
“I wouldn’t care to throw up my guts,” said Keen.
“You know that’s not all. You told me in the coach that you’ve never tasted a drop of it. You told me you’ve seen what it can do to more people than Joshua Oakley, and Pie’s told me the same. There’s a reason you forbid any of the Broodies to drink it.”
“That don’t come from me, it comes from Mother Deare. She don’t want to cut into the profits.”
“She doesn’t want her sellers to become addicted wretches and spoil the play,” Matthew said. He looked from Keen’s face to Pie’s and back again and saw they were both struggling with the morals they thought they’d abandoned many years ago. “It’s one thing to release upon the city—and I daresay the whole of England—a liquor of low cost and high volatility. It’s quite enough to be knowingly selling a drug meant to turn its users into mindless maniacs who would do anything to get more of it.”
“We don’t know that!” Keen’s face had reddened. His eyes were shiny, and he looked like a smoldering torch about to burst into flame.
“Yeah,” Pie added. “And anyway, it’s like I told you…if we wasn’t sellin’ it, somebody else would be.” She turned her lantern upon the accuser. “It’s about the money, Matthew! See, you don’t understand it! You can’t! You ain’t a part of Whitechapel, you don’t know what a person has to do to survive here! All right, maybe there is some drug in the Velvet that keeps ’em cravin’ it, but we ain’t the keepers of every poor fool out there! I wouldn’t touch the shit, neither would Rory nor anybody else got any sense in their head, but plenty do and they pay good coin for it and that’s all the matter!”
“Wrong,” Matthew said firmly. “Rory, you told me you wanted to stay far away from Professor Fell. Well here you are in his waistcoat pocket! All the Broodies are, and have been since Mother Deare came to Mick Abernathy to strike the deal. That was four years ago, you say?”
“Near four.”
“I would imagine the Velvet’s gotten more and more highly dosed as time’s gone on. It probably started off with just a light touch from Jonathan Gentry’s book of potions.”
“This doctor you’re tellin’ me about,” said Keen. “Fell’s chemist, he was?”
“In a way, yes.”
“So…why would Fell want to spread a drugged gin ’cross the city? And the whole country, if you’re right about this. Why not just make a cheap, strong gin and let it go at that? He’d have plenty a’customers.”
“That’s not enough for him. He wants to make sure his brand is the one drinkers crave…that they feel they can’t live without. And I believe there’s another, darker reason.” Matthew let his light move across the six barrels, which probably held more than enough to fill the bottles in the crates. “He knows it’s not just the beggars and prostitutes who are going to become addicted. He knows the Velvet is going to find its way to the higher positions, to the businessmen, the attorneys, the constables and the judges. A blind need make
s for blind corruption. The Velvet becomes a kind of currency he can use to buy those who might otherwise resist the influence. This moment, I’ll wager there are politicians, officers of the law and maybe a judge or two who are getting a private supply. They’re hiding their weakness, and Fell is preying on it. That’s his way, believe me. Right now he’s got some powerful people in his pocket who’ve been snagged by the Velvet, and those people are the ones he’s really after but he’s had to hide that by…shall we say…drowning the market in it.”
“But he don’t drown the market,” Keen persisted. “Look at them barrels. They been sittin’ here for quite a while even though the taverns are wantin’ more!”
“He’s building demand so the price will go up. Also maybe conducting a little social experiment to see what the addicts do when they find they can’t—”
“Rory?” The door at the top of the stairs had opened. Tom Lancey had come in. “They’re here,” he said quietly.
“You mean, she’s here?”
“Not her. Frost and Willow. They’re wantin’ to speak to ever’body all at the same time.”
“They’re wantin’ the ledger book?”
“Didn’t ask for it. Just say they got some questions.”
“Be there directly,” Keen said, and Lancey left and closed the door. Keen’s light came up into Matthew’s face. “Peculiar. She’s always with ’em, and there’s always three. Questions. Shit, I don’t like the sound a’that. Must not be wantin’ to go over the book, though, ’cause she’s the one with the numbers nose.” He lowered the lantern. “All right, we’re in for it. Listen good, Matthew: they’re not likely to come down here ’cause all the business is writ up, but if I was you I’d still dowse my light and find me a place behind them casks to bellydown awhile. Got it?”
“Got it.” He was already looking for a place.
“Come on,” Keen said to Pie, and they went up the stairs, out of the cellar and shut the door securely at their backs.
The two men were waiting in the central chamber, standing next to the table where Matthew had received his Broodie tattoo. Night had fallen outside; no light showed through chinks in the window’s boards. The other Broodies had assembled at Frost’s command. The two men both held lanterns and so did several of the others. Raindrops glistened on the men’s coats and tricorns. By the yellow glow Keen saw that Frost looked a little worn and weary, and Frost was pressing a gloved hand to the center of his chest and breathing raggedly.
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