by Alex Grecian
“Who?”
“Me,” Kingsley said.
49
Fiona followed Claire through the front doors of the Hammersmith Agency. The young woman behind the desk didn’t look up.
“What can I do for you?”
“My husband is missing,” Claire said.
“Oh, dear, Mrs Day.” The woman jumped up and came around, moved the paperwork off a chair, and gestured for her main client to sit. “What brings you here today?”
“Eugenia,” Claire said, “this is my friend Fiona Kingsley. Fiona, this is Miss Merrilow.”
“Pleased,” Fiona said. “We don’t need to sit down. We’re looking for Mr Hammersmith. Is he here?”
“I haven’t seen him at all today,” Eugenia said.
“Do you know where he is?”
“I’m afraid I don’t. I’m alone here or I’d try him at home.”
“Do you think he’s there?”
“No.” Eugenia leaned back against the front of her desk and bit her lower lip. “Really, he’s rarely at home, anyway. He’s out somewhere looking for Mr Day, if that helps matters, Mrs Day.”
“He’s found my husband already,” Claire said. “And now he’s run off somewhere and so has Mr Day, and I don’t know where they’ve gone.”
“He found him? He finally found him?”
“For a minute or two,” Claire said. “But now they’re both gone.”
“Oh, dear,” Eugenia said again. “A cup of tea?”
“No, thank you. You’ve no ideas?”
“Even Hatty hasn’t been in and she usually checks in with me.”
“Hatty?”
“Yes,” Eugenia said. “I’m sorry, what did you say your name was?”
“Fiona.”
“Yes, Fiona. Hatty is the other investigator here.”
“She’s an investigator?” Fiona had no idea why, but she felt a hot pang of jealousy at the base of her neck.
“Well, she fancies herself one.” Eugenia pushed herself off the desk and went round to her chair, sat back down. “She usually checks in with me in the morning, but she wasn’t here today.”
“Do you think she’s with Nevil?”
“No, they rarely cross paths.”
Fiona felt a wave of relief pass through her. “Well, we’ve got to track Mr Hammersmith somehow. Do you think Hatty knows where he is?”
“I would have no idea. The last I heard, she was going to investigate the department store. The new one, you know? She’s on her own little hunt for someone. It’s awfully ambitious.”
“Do you mean Plumm’s?”
“Yes, that’s the one. The gentleman she’s looking for works there. Or worked there. Perhaps he’s dead. Exciting! At any rate, he worked there, he lived there. And Hatty’s got some kind of list of places to look at.”
“If she was going there, then we should go there, too,” Fiona said.
“It collapsed,” Claire said. “Isn’t it completely gone? That’s where Mr Hammersmith found Walter.”
“Wait,” Fiona said. “What do you mean he lived there?”
“I can’t believe he found Mr Day,” Eugenia said. “How long have we been looking? Months!”
“What do you mean he lived there? Lived at Plumm’s?”
“Yes, they have apartments at the back,” Eugenia said. “Or so Hatty said. Keeps the workers there longer hours.” Her eyes flicked to the clock against the wall.
“At the back? Behind the store?”
“Somewhere back there. I don’t know. Nobody tells me anything. I’m quite undervalued.”
“I’ll tell Mr Hammersmith to give you an increase in pay,” Claire said. “Thank you.”
They were already out the door when Fiona heard Eugenia’s voice. “Does this mean you’re no longer a client?”
50
I was old enough to know better,” Kingsley said. “But I still allowed my emotions to get the better of me. My wife had just died, and I was angry and I had two young daughters.”
They were walking down Moorgate toward Plumm’s. Day was leaning heavily on his cane, and Hammersmith was leaning forward, trying desperately to hear what Kingsley was saying. Kingsley’s voice was a soft foghorn noise drifting across to him from some faraway place. He could make sense of the words, but the conversation was getting ahead of him.
“They approached me,” Kingsley said. “Catherine had died of consumption, and Fiona was at an age when she needed a mother. I wasn’t of much use to her anymore.”
“I’m sure that’s not true, Doctor,” Day said.
“Fiona’s a wonderful person,” Hammersmith said.
Kingsley shot him an arch glance. “So you’ve noticed that, have you?”
While Hammersmith tried to parse the meaning of that, Kingsley continued.
“I don’t think you’ve met my older daughter. She’s been away at university. She didn’t come home for the funeral, didn’t answer my letters. After a while, I stopped trying to reach her. I felt her disappointment so keenly and I thought she blamed me for her mother’s death. I blamed myself. And I blamed this damn city with its horse shit in the streets, the germs and the dirt.”
He lapsed into silence as they reached the department store and Day led them around to a tall outbuilding with huge double doors that stretched two stories high. He pulled a handle and one of the doors swung open on well-oiled hinges. The three of them stepped through into the dusk of the warehouse. Yellow light poured through windows that were set high under the roof. Hammersmith marveled at the size of it. A game of cricket might comfortably have been played inside. Much of the vast space seemed to be wasted. The chamber was sparsely filled with construction equipment, lumber and building materials, workbenches, wheeled carts, and a congregation of mannequins in one corner. He imagined the life-size wooden people hushing one another, startled by the three men who had entered their hall uninvited.
“They’re over here,” Day said. He walked to where a number of the carts, perhaps a hundred of them, had been haphazardly collected and he started to roll them away from one another, checking inside each one. He stopped and stood silently. Hammersmith and Kingsley joined him and looked down into the open top of the cart.
“I knew him,” Day said. “Not well, but he was a good lad. He wanted to learn to read. He would have grown to be a good man if anyone had given him the chance. He deserved better than this.”
The inspector’s eyes welled up, and Hammersmith looked away, pretending not to notice.
“This city doesn’t nurture its children,” Kingsley said.
Hammersmith leaned forward. “What did you say?”
“I tried to make things better here after Catherine died,” Kingsley said. “I did. I moved the morgue into the hospital, I set guidelines for cleanliness, and I looked for new ways to do the same old things, ways to improve on our methods. My methods, police methods, hospital methods. I was trained to think of everything in terms of how it was done, the methodology. It’s why I gravitated so easily to helping Scotland Yard. But it wasn’t enough.”
“There are two others here,” Day said. “Two women. Strangers to me, but someone will know them.”
“We’ll bury them properly,” Kingsley said.
“The Karstphanomen came to you?”
“They offered me membership,” Kingsley said. “Of course, this was after they’d vetted me, taken me to dinners, studied my reactions to their veiled ideas during long conversations and good Scotch. Some of them seemed to be as angry as I was. Some had suffered losses or worked in positions where they saw firsthand how often bad men got away with their crimes. Some of them were hungry for power or were simply the sort of men who enjoy hurting others. I didn’t see that at first. I was blinded by loss and pain and idealism. I feel ashamed now.”
“How could you know wh
at they were?”
“I should have paid better attention. We both should have. The clues were there, plain to see.”
“Who do you mean?”
“Hmm?”
“You said ‘we both should have paid attention.’ You’re one.”
“Ah, yes. I really shouldn’t tell tales, but you may need to warn Sir Edward about this man’s agenda, too, if he doesn’t already know. We were both courted. He was new to his current appointment and would have been a prize recruit for them.”
“Sir Edward is a Karstphanomen?” Day took a step back and almost stumbled. Hammersmith leapt forward, but Day caught himself by stabbing the ground with his cane. He waved his friend away.
“No,” Kingsley said. “No, of course not. In fact, Sir Edward took certain precautions to protect us from the more zealous elements of the club when we refused membership.”
“So you didn’t join them,” Hammersmith said. “Of course you didn’t. But in that case why would Jack be after you now?”
“Oh, I don’t know for a fact that he is after me. I know very little, really. It’s taken me a long while to realize how little I know.”
Day seemed to be ignoring them. He was rolling carts back and forth, checking each one for weight before looking inside them. At last, he turned around and nodded. “They’re both here. In these two carts.”
Kingsley passed his hand over his face, then moved forward and looked down into each of the carts in turn. Hammersmith followed him, but he didn’t recognize either of the women.
Kingsley sighed. “Whoever did this was no doctor. Some say Jack the Ripper must be a surgeon. They say he must have a physician’s knowledge of the body in order to do what he does. But they’ve mistaken passion for knowledge. There’s a glee on display here, a monstrous pleasure at work, not a surgeon’s technique. He’s simply learned by doing, and who knows how long he’s been at it?”
“You think they’re sex workers?”
“No. Look at their hands.” Kingsley reached in and lifted one woman’s hand. Neither Day nor Hammersmith leaned in to see. They both waited for the doctor to tell them what he had observed. “They were menial workers of a different sort. Their nails are short and their fingertips are calloused. The skin is bleached from contact with chemicals. These women worked as maids or housekeepers of some sort. I don’t say their lives were any better than you assumed them to be, Mr Hammersmith. Life is hard.”
“Ambrose said they were in an upper room at the store,” Day said.
“Perhaps they found something Jack didn’t want them to,” Hammersmith said. “Or saw something incriminating. If he’s gone to ground here with all the pressure from the police and Blackleg’s people hounding him, maybe he was protecting his refuge or his identity.”
“Or perhaps he could no longer resist the urge to kill,” Kingsley said. “Some of these creatures simply need to kill, and woe betide anyone who crosses their line of sight at the wrong moment.”
“Was it really so wrong that the Karstphanomen did what they did?”
Kingsley stared at Hammersmith down the length of his nose, then turned his head to the ceiling high above them. He drew a long breath and blew it out through his mouth. “I’m not sure it’s up to you or me to determine that sort of thing. But perhaps I’ve spent too many evenings discussing theology with my daughter.”
“Did you ever see him? Did you ever see Jack after he’d been captured?”
“I did see him,” Kingsley said. “It was only the one time. It was a glorious occasion for the Karst. They had come across him while he slept. Or so we were told, Sir Edward and I. We were roused from our beds in the middle of the night and ferried by private carriage to a room in Whitechapel, where he lay stretched out across his most recent victim. I gave him a sedative, stabbed the needle so deep in his neck I might’ve gone through and hit what was left of the girl under him. I was aiming for his spine, hoping to paralyze him, but I wasn’t precise enough. He lived, and he is obviously mobile.”
“You helped them.”
“That one time. I came to my senses after and haven’t had any dealings with them since. I have seen one or two of them in passing. They’re unavoidable, really. Some of them are very powerfully connected in this city. And in others. But we spent that night, the commissioner and I, discussing what had happened and what was to be done. We lacked the influence to stop them, not without causing ourselves a great deal of grief. Perhaps we should have pushed harder, maybe even arrested them all. But we would have lost our appointments, him with the police, me with the hospital, and we both felt we could still do some good. I would do things differently now. As I say, it was a confusing time for me.”
“They have that much power?”
“Yes, Mr Hammersmith, they come from all walks of life. There are members of parliament, there are lords and judges.”
Hammersmith thought he saw Kingsley shoot an inquisitive glance at Day, but the inspector didn’t notice or react.
“I should say they were powerful,” Kingsley said. “Our friend Jack has whittled them down to the bone, I think.”
“There can’t be many of them left.”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
“What about Sir Edward?”
“We have never spoken of it since. I believe he has blotted the entire thing from his mind, much as you have avoided all thought of your own life, Mr Day. Our minds defend themselves by going dim, the way you might close the shutter on a lamp.”
“Why did I do that?”
“You thought you were protecting the people you loved. You loved them so much that you gave up your own life in order to save them. It’s not common, but I’ve read about similar things.”
“Jack made that happen?”
“You say he mesmerized you, but that’s not what your memory loss was about. You forgot because you needed to forget.”
Hammersmith put his hand to his ear. “What about Jack?”
“He’s wounded,” Day said.
“He’s dangerous,” Kingsley said.
“He’s somewhere nearby,” Hammersmith said. “Right?”
“He was losing blood,” Day said. “I don’t think he could have gone far.”
“Where? Where was he wounded?”
“Somewhere in his belly.”
“That doesn’t tell me much,” Kingsley said. “How much was it oozing?”
“It seemed like a lot of blood, but I was disoriented. I feel like I’ve been disoriented for so long.”
“Yes, yes, but was there visible pus? Or anything brown coming with the blood? Specifics, son.”
“It was seeping steadily, but not fast. There was pus. I didn’t see anything brown. No, I did, but it might have been dried blood. I don’t know how long he was bleeding.”
“How was he moving?”
“With difficulty, but when there was need, he was quick.”
“He’s mad,” Hammersmith said. “The mad move quickly.”
The other two looked at him and he smiled at them, but Kingsley turned away and addressed Day again. “Was he sweating?”
“I don’t remember,” Day said.
“I’d guess he has gone to ground here. Not in this place.” He waved his hand at the high ceiling, the walls that faced each other across the vast distance. “But he might be at Plumm’s.”
“The store is a wreck,” Hammersmith said. He hoped he was keeping up well enough with the conversation.
“So there’s this warehouse we’re in,” Kingsley said. “There’s the store proper. What else? Is there a place on the premises where someone might hide away?”
“I don’t know,” Day said. “He has an office. He stole it from someone. Probably someone he killed.”
“You think he could be there?”
“He’d be foolish to go there now.”
> “Except the store’s deserted. Who would look for him there?”
“You could be right.”
“Let’s look,” Hammersmith said. “We’re prepared, he’s not. Let’s find him.”
“You lads go,” Kingsley said. “I’ll join you in a few minutes. My priority is doing right by these poor victims.” He nodded at the carts and thought of the boy there.
Hammersmith wondered how well Day had known Ambrose, how much that tiny death had hurt him. He wondered if that might be worse than a year of forgetfulness.
“How long will it take the police to get here?”
“Not long,” Kingsley said. “Sir Edward will have a lot of questions. We’re all going to be observed carefully after this.”
“Then we’ll hurry. If Jack’s still here, Nevil and I will do our best to deal with him quickly, before he has another chance to get away, to kill more innocents.” He indicated the bodies in the carts.
“I’ll find a telephone,” Kingsley said.
“See if you can’t get Inspector Tiffany to come out here,” Hammersmith said. “And Sergeant Kett. They may not believe the Ripper’s about, but they’ll come just the same, and we could use their help.”
“I’ll do my best to persuade them,” Kingsley said. “And I’ll get a wagon on its way for these bodies. Then I’ll find you.”
51
Mr and Mrs Parker had drawn Leland Carlyle out from his club and followed him to his daughter’s house, to Guildhall, and then to a shabby detective agency. He went in while his driver waited, then came rushing back out, and the cab rolled away once more down the street with the Parkers trailing after.
“It’s quite a cortege we make, dearest heart,” Mrs Parker said.
“They’re going to want results soon,” Mr Parker said. “How patient can they possibly be?”
“Who?”
“Whoever they are. That club that’s so secret, we’re not supposed to know their name.”
“The Karstphanomen.”