The Bellingham Bloodbath

by Harris, Gregory

  “It’s no bother.”

  “I have been dim enough already,” I insisted. “If you lead me down the hall like I’m starkers I shall be quite mortified.” I backed toward the door, smiling with all the humility I could muster. “I shall see you tomorrow, Corporal. You have been most kind.”

  “It’s my pleasure, sir,” he said, following me to the door but thankfully going no farther. “I do hope you and Mr. Pendragon will get this behind us soon. It is such a terrible thing.”

  “You can be certain we will.” I nodded fervently, as much to convince myself as him. I gestured toward the vicinity of Corporal Bramwood’s office. “I remember now.” I chuckled.

  He waved but did not go back inside his office until I had reached Corporal Bramwood’s door. I signaled to him and drew a quick breath, waiting for the instant when Corporal Bramwood would catch sight of me, but as I stepped inside all remained silent. I looked around to find the small anteroom empty. “Hello?!” I called out in an alarmingly feeble voice. No answer came. There were no lamps lit in Major Hampstead’s interior office, although several were still on in Corporal Bramwood’s area.

  I wandered around to the far side of the corporal’s tidy desk, trying to discern whether he might have left for the night. Everything was in impeccable order and I could see at once that the letter had not been carelessly left out. With a sinking disappointment, my eyes drifted over to the large metal safe in the far corner of the room. It was a foreboding piece, jet-black and nearly six feet in height, without the slightest hint of scrollwork or decoration that might suggest it was anything other than what it was—an impregnable fortress, immovable and unyielding in its secrets. Why had I never learned to pick a lock?

  “Forget something?” A hard, sarcastic voice startled me. I turned around to find Corporal Bramwood standing in the doorway, a chagrined expression on his face.

  I tried to smile, but fear caught the best of me, constraining my throat and seizing my face as though with rictus. What had lulled me into thinking that wandering over to this side of his desk was a good thing? “I’ve been waiting for you,” I managed to say, trying to casually sidle out from where I was. “I owe you an apology, Corporal. Mr. Pendragon’s behavior was inexcusable this evening. It’s the reason I came back.” I hoped I sounded plausible.

  Corporal Bramwood stared at me, his face dour, and I feared he was on the verge of telling me to bugger off. He pursed his lips and stepped all the way into the office, taking great pains to cross behind his desk from the opposite side I had been trying to extract myself from. Still, he said nothing.

  “I was looking for paper and something to write with,” I offered belatedly. “I thought perhaps you had already left. I wanted to leave you a note. To apologize—” I bit my tongue and told myself to shut up.

  The corporal brusquely sorted an already-meticulous pile of papers on the near corner of his desk before finally raising his gaze to me. “Well then”—his eyes were hooded and dark, his mouth a thin line—“you have accomplished your goal.”

  “No,” I said at once, a pained smile coming easily to my face, “I don’t see that I have. I can tell you’re angry and my apology is ringing untrue. You have taken offense with Mr. Pendragon’s methods and I can hardly blame you.” I was desperate to get him talking, or commiserating, or yelling . . . anything to get him to engage. “I know he can be infuriating at times, but I assure you it is only out of passion for the case at hand. I don’t mean to offer an excuse, only to state a fact. Even so, there are times when he does go too far.”

  “He’s pompous”—the young corporal seized the bait—“and he’s accusatory. I don’t like being accused. I haven’t done anything.”

  I nodded agreeably. “Well understood, Corporal Bramwood, but you must realize that everyone is a suspect until the case is solved. While that may seem harsh, it has proven to be effective over the years. It has allowed Mr. Pendragon to see past the rhetoric of those who are most deceptive.”

  “Nevertheless,” the corporal grumbled, “it might do him good to learn to be more discerning.”

  “And there is no denying that.”

  “I don’t know how you work with him.”

  “There are days . . . ,” I chuckled, but the young man did not join me. With nothing else coming to mind, I gestured to one of the chairs and asked, “May I?”

  He nodded and sat down himself.

  “Is Major Hampstead still here?”

  “No.”

  I feigned disappointment, though it was what I had been counting on. Even as the young man continued to absently rearrange papers on his desk I knew my time to try for that letter had come. There would be no other. “I am sure you must be aware of the deadline imposed on us to solve these murders,” I started, desperate to find the right words.

  “Of course.”

  “Yes.” I nodded again while he continued to fuss about his desk. I let a minute pass before pressing on. I would like to say I was playing a calculated game, but in truth I was only stumbling haphazardly forward. “Most of your regiment wishes to dispense its own judgment outside the public’s scrutiny, but there is a chance that an error could be made, or worse, that no conclusion might be reached at all. Murders like these can be a mire. Even Scotland Yard struggles to wring justice from such cases. Just look at the Ripper killings a few years back.”

  Another group of papers moved from one corner of his desk to another, followed by a thorough reshuffling. “And what’s your point?”

  “We can solve this case properly, Corporal, and have an end to it by five o’clock tomorrow. We will bring justice where it is due and make certain that the murderer of Captain Bellingham and his wife pays the price at the end of a rope.”

  “And why are you telling me this?”

  “Because you could make the difference.” I leaned forward and locked eyes with him. “Corporal Bramwood, you could make all the difference.”

  “I don’t have any idea what you’re getting at.” His voice was clipped and strained, but he did not drop his gaze.

  “It’s the letter, Corporal. The one Captain Bellingham wrote to Lady Stuart. I should very much like to get my hands on that letter for just this one night. I can have it back in your hands with the dawn, delivered whenever and wherever you tell me.”

  “Out of the question!” he snapped, turning back to his desk.

  I was glad he had looked away, as I’m certain despair was etched all across my face. While it was certainly the answer I had expected, it was distressing to hear just the same. I leaned back and watched as he shoved an appointment book into a top drawer. This was it. He was clearly ready to go home. “I’m sorry,” I blustered out of nowhere. “I just assumed you had access to the safe.”

  “I have access.” He turned on me as though I had questioned the very state of his virility. “Who do you think put the wretched thing in there?”

  “Then I don’t understand. I know you admired Captain Bellingham. You told us so yourself. This case can be finished tomorrow. The Bellinghams avenged—”

  The corporal scowled. “You can do all that with one letter?”

  “The letter is critical.”

  “I read it. I didn’t see anything so important there.”

  “To be honest, Corporal Bramwood”—I offered a crooked smile as though we were in league—“neither did I. But Mr. Pendragon insists differently, and in all the years I’ve watched him work, I have never seen his instincts fail him.”

  “You have great faith in your Mr. Pendragon,” he said with a noticeable measure of animosity.

  “It’s not faith.” I smiled. “I have been at his side for almost a dozen years now. Time and again I have been witness to the depth of his abilities, and while his methods and demeanor can be unorthodox”—I gave an uneasy shrug—“even abrasive . . . his skill is without equal. And tonight, Corporal, I am telling you that there is no one here who can have a greater impact on this case than you. That letter, something you and I h
ave both dismissed, may well hold the key to the solution of this case and I am beseeching you to allow me to take it for just a few hours.” I held his eyes and endured the discomfort of him studying me, gauging, I am sure, my sincerity.

  “I’m not sure I like your Mr. Pendragon,” he said after a moment. “I don’t know why I should help him.”

  “It’s not for him,” I scoffed. “You misunderstand me, Corporal. This has nothing to do with him. It is about Captain Bellingham and his wife, Gwendolyn.” And even though I felt as if I had just wielded a sledgehammer, I thought I detected a crack in his façade.

  “I have no desire to cooperate with your Mr. Pendragon,” he said again, only this time with an odd gruffness. “And I am not all that interested in helping you, either,” he added, “but Captain Bellingham was good to me, kind to me, at a time when many others were not. I owe him a great deal and never had the chance to tell him.” He glanced down and I watched as his body sagged the tiniest bit. “I won’t be the reason some bastard gets away with what was done to him.”

  I nodded but kept silent, my heart ramping up with hope that maybe . . . just maybe . . .

  “However”—he leaned across the desk and his eyes flashed angrily—“I will not take a fall for you or Mr. Pendragon. When I walk through that door at five forty-five tomorrow morning the first thing I will do is open that safe to get Major Hampstead’s ledger, same as I do every day, and if you haven’t already handed that letter back to me I shall send up an alarm that the safe’s been breached. And you can be sure I will tell them how you were poking around asking to see it tonight. The two of you won’t see the arrival of six o’clock before a contingent of Life Guards will be raging at your door.”

  “I would expect no less,” I immediately agreed.

  Without another word, he stood up and went to the safe, tumbling the dial with the assurance of someone who did it routinely. At the sound of a loud click! he yanked one of the horizontal handles and swung the massive door wide. He reached in and extracted the familiar envelope with its hastily torn flap sticking up and then slammed it shut again, tossing the envelope into my lap. “There,” he said with finality.

  I stared at it like some sort of feral thing, fearful that I was about to find myself the brunt of a terrible hoax. That as soon as I picked it up a phalanx of the Queen’s Regiment would come tumbling out from the blackened inner office to arrest me for what I had attempted to do. “I will be outside by five fifteen tomorrow morning waiting for you,” I said, my heart thundering as I stood up. “I shall not let you down.”

  He shrugged. “Makes little difference to me.”

  I slid the letter into my coat. “You have done a noble thing.”

  “If you don’t mind . . . ,” he muttered as he crossed back behind his desk, otherwise ignoring me.

  “Of course. Thank you, Corporal Bramwood.” He did not respond as I moved to the door, and I took his silence as a warning to get out quickly lest he should change his mind. With my heart pounding in my ears, I hurried off, hoping I would be able to dissolve into the night long before he could do so.

  CHAPTER 30

  “ ’E said ya gotta put this on.” The skinny little black-haired urchin we had hired to watch the Easterbrooke flat shook a long, dark cloak and cap at me. “ ’E don’t want ya ta be seen when I take ya to ’im.”

  “He said that, did he?” I scowled as I plucked the wrinkled, threadbare cloak out of his hand. “And where did you get this?”

  “Me da,” he answered. “And I gotta get it back to ’im afore ’e ’eads out ta get guttered. So I ’ope ya don’t plan on keepin’ it all bloomin’ night.”

  A strong pungency of sour ale and infrequent hygiene assaulted my nose as I settled it on my shoulders. “Perish the thought,” I muttered.

  I accepted the cap from the boy, taking care not to inspect it too closely before slipping it on my head. I had only just arrived from Buckingham and he had me smelling like one of the bilge rats that lurked about the shores of the Thames. If Edwina Easterbrooke or one of her neighbors had peeked out their window they would surely have summoned a bobby posthaste, and I wouldn’t have blamed them. “So where exactly is Mr. Pendragon?”

  “I already told ya—’e went off with me mate. Tol’ me ta stay ’ere and bring ya to ’im when ya showed up.” He was staring at me with a critical eye and I had the distinct impression I was failing his assessment. “Wants ya ta be dark as the night. Don’t want no one ta see ya comin’.”

  “So you have said.”

  My young accomplice shook his head. “It ain’t right. Yer bloomin’ face is shinin’ like the bleedin’ moon.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s because I haven’t had the time to collect the detritus covering your face,” I shot back.

  “You got a funny way a talkin’.” He snickered.

  “Why don’t you just take me to Mr. Pendragon and let me worry about the glow of my face,” I said, struggling to maintain some civility.

  “Not till we get it right. ’Ere—” He reached over and splashed a fistful of mud onto my cheeks. I jerked back, but it didn’t stop him from quickly transferring a portion to my nose, forehead, and chin. “Quit yer squirmin’.” He scowled before stepping back with a huge grin. “There now. You’re good as the night. Should be worth a tuppence at least.”

  “Get me to Mr. Pendragon or you will get nothing!” I groused.

  “We ’ave ta take the Tube part a the way unless ya wanna snag a ride on the back of a carriage?”

  “How about we get a ride in one. Assuming we can get someone to pick us up now that you have slathered me in muck.”

  “Ya look good! ’E’ll be right pleased ta see ya like that.”

  “Just get us a ruddy cab already,” I grumbled.

  The boy was successful almost at once, hailing a cab as it came bounding out of the park. I tugged the cap down over my face before stepping out of the shadows, keeping my chin low as I climbed into the seat.

  “Take us ta Wappin’,” the boy ordered. “And don’t bugger about, either.”

  “Piss off,” the driver called back.

  “So we’re headed to Wapping?” I asked as we got under way.

  “ ’At’s what I said.” He looked at me with a sly smile, brash and jaded. I had been so less sure of myself at this boy’s age but no less determined.

  It was a relief when the cab finally came to a halt a few minutes later just around the corner from Wapping High Street. The boy was very particular about where we should be dropped off: along the brick ramparts walling off the Thames, just behind a row of warehouses lined up like silent black monoliths.

  I handed cash to the driver, who didn’t even bother to take a second look at the mud caked on my face, and then waited with my young escort until the carriage had disappeared from sight. Only then did he whisper, “Let’s go.”

  He pulled his jacket around himself and hunched his shoulders against the wind that had kicked up near the water, starting down the High Street in the opposite direction from where the cab had just disappeared. We walked along the Thames for about a block and a half before abruptly cutting back behind a massive warehouse that hulked in the reflected moonlight. In spite of the extra light, I couldn’t make out a sign or scrawled name anywhere along the length of the building. It had few distinguishing features at all as it stretched off far beyond my ability to discern it. Lanky weeds licked its sides and I could see some measure of disrepair: bits of crumbling mortar, curls of dark rotting paint that had drifted down from the eaves, and occasional shards of broken glass twinkling in the glow of the moon. It appeared that the warehouse had long ago outlived its usefulness.

  Just as I began to gird myself for the possibility that this ruddy little scoundrel might be about to toss me, a dark form came flying down from somewhere overhead, landing nimbly in the shadows just to my left.

  “That you, mate?” my companion hissed.

  “ ’Oo else?” The sandy-haired boy stepped into
a swath of light. While probably a year older and almost a handful of inches taller, he was every bit as slight. “ ’Bout bloody time ya got back,” he said.

  “It were ’is fault—”

  “We’re here now!” I snapped. “Now where’s Mr. Pendragon?”

  “Up there.” The older boy, clearly the leader of this duo, gestured toward the roof. “I’ll take ya up, but it’ll cost ya another crown.”

  “I do not need to be taken up,” I informed him, aware that neither of these boys could conceive that I had once been as they were. “Just show me where he is and the both of you can be off.”

  The taller boy tilted his head and smiled at me before raising a hand and pointing toward the roof. “ ’Bout there.”

  I stared up the thirty or so feet and realized I had seen no steps, ladders, or even trash bins upon which I could leverage myself. There was only the Cheshire grin of the rascal confirming that I was indeed being tossed.

  “ ’Cause I like ya, I’ll take ya up fer ’alf a crown,” he added, well pleased with himself.

  “Fine!” I gritted my teeth, angry at having been bested by these two.

  “And ya owe me a crown fer gettin’ ya ’ere,” the smaller boy piped in.

  I paid them both, grudgingly and without the dexterity Colin would have used, and in less time than it took to extract the coins from my pocket the older boy moved into the darkness across from where we were standing and seized a thin, flimsy ladder that had been hidden in the scrubby undergrowth. It took the full depth and breadth of my character to keep from throttling him, and I suppose a modicum of begrudging respect.

  “Up ya go, now.” The cunning lad smirked at me.

  I grabbed hold of the rickety frame and carefully worked my way to the top. The older boy held the bottom of it, but the fact of its fragility worked considerably against him, allowing it to sway and wobble with every step I took. It was a relief when my fingers finally grasped the lip of the flat roof and I was able to boost myself the rest of the way up.