He watched as a fly, drunk from the heat, crawled along the leather armrest. Rolling up the paper he leaned forward. Resisted. Settled back again. After all those royal arses, the padded seat was still comfortable. Someone had been picking at the buttons.
25. Chemistry
The Chief Barrister’s smile was a code without a key.
“During your unsanctioned absence yesterday – ” (Wyre cringed inwardly) “ – I instructed Mr Brockton to begin collating the Vere Street evidence.” He gave Wyre an appraising look. “But you, Wyre – ” the barrister’s hooded eyes narrowed “ – you will be prosecuting.”
Wyre bowed his head in cautious acknowledgement. It was still a molly brief, but at least one the whole city was talking about.
“It will be a case with reach,” Best said, his eyes two tight points. “The Secretary of State himself has addressed the House. An ambitious man would make much of that.”
Wyre bowed again. “I hope I know my job, sir.”
“We all hope that, Wyre.” Best’s gaze drifted to the window. “The city is awash with moral dissidents. We are all that keeps it from utter degeneracy.”
Wyre returned to his office to find the most basic of notes waiting for him on his desk, just a scrawled address above a single spidery letter: L. All he needed. Twenty minutes later, the lawyer was clattering through districts the Society for the Suppression of Vice would gladly see cleared by cannon.
He disembarked at the entrance to Crispin Street, a tight, nondescript avenue near the corner of Howden Place. No. 23b, it transpired, could only be reached via a rusty grille-gate to the side of a milliner’s shop. It was a fireman’s nightmare. He spotted Leighton’s hobby-horse padlocked to a down pipe, surrounded by curious wagtails, who no doubt made a habitual lazaretto of the street.
A constable was waiting. “Ain’t a pretty sight, sir,” he warned, leading Wyre up to the third floor. “Someone’s had a right go.”
Wyre paused on the landing. It wasn’t quite a stench yet, but was well on the way. Sleeve to his nose, he followed the constable into a tiny den at the end of the corridor. The smell there was overwhelming, sending his stomach into spasms.
No sign of Leighton.
In the far corner, a waxy figure sat slumped in a dark, viscous pool, head lolling a little sideways. His open eyes seemed to be staring at an upturned chair in the middle of the room as if he wished to right it. The chair belonged to a writing desk, the lid of which had been prised.
Wyre took a step forwards, and felt something crunch underfoot. Looking down, he saw he’d stepped on a little pile of spent brimstone matches.
“Watch the empiricals, there’s a good man.” Leighton’s voice from the doorway.
Wyre turned, relieved. “Empiricals?”
“Our quarry’s soiled the turf.”
How do you know they’re his?” Wyre cast a glance back at the body.
“I’ll tell you.” Leighton crossed to the dead man. “But first, what do you make of this?” He bent over, fishing out from the gore a blade with a round handle. Four inches or so in length.
“I’d say it was a leather-knife,” Wyre answered.
Leighton nodded, handing the blade to his constable. “Something a tanner might use. Why’s it still here, though? Suggests the blade didn’t belong to the assassin, doesn’t it. Oh, and this might also interest you.” He produced a small card from his pocket.
Wyre took it, whistling under his breath at the design. A crudely embossed white swan.
“Thought you’d like it,” Leighton said. “Authentic Vere Street Club . . . proper objet de vertu. Worth a bit now, I’d have thought.”
“Did you come by it here?”
Leighton gestured towards the escritoire. “Whoever forced the lock evidently didn’t think it worth keeping, or destroying for that matter.”
“So the victim was a White Swan man. And worked in the tanning trade.”
“Seems safe enough to assume.”
“Who found him?”
“One of the wagtails. Complained about the smell, poor dear. Said it was putting off her customers.”
“Any idea who he was?”
“I was rather hoping you’d be able to help me with that. Have a good look, Kit. Ever seen him before?”
Wyre forced himself to look. “It’s no one who’s ever appeared on my books.”
Leighton nodded. “Well, it was worth a shot.” Kneeling, he took a thin pencil from behind his ear, and pushed it into an inch-wide slit in the man’s nightshirt. His ersatz physician’s probe disappeared to his fingertips. “Smack in the liver. Someone knew his job.”
The Runner seemed different, somehow. His eyes were restless, almost convulsive in their movements. Had he slept at all in the three nights since their encounter under the bridge?
Leighton hoiked the man’s bloody nightshirt up over his shoulders, revealing a well-defined torso; then, to Wyre’s disgust, he reached down for the dead man’s yard, which he retracted, exposing a large, pale bulbous head. After staring at it for a moment, he heaved the body onto its side.
“No sign of cordial,” he announced, as he inspected the corpse’s seat. “Our man didn’t shoot his bolt that night, and as far as I can tell he wasn’t used that way by anyone else. This wasn’t some spat over a half-shilling ride.”
“A burglary, then?”
“No sign of forced entry . . .” Smiling grimly, he pushed himself to his feet and moved to the casement, craning his head over the ledge. “It’s a good thirty feet down to the alleyway.” He looked left and right. “No drainpipe or trellis. Nothing that could take a man’s weight.” He peered back over the ledge as if calculating where precisely on the scale of impossibility scaling a vertical wall with no handholds lay. “At least we know one thing for certain: our assassin came for something specific.” He nodded at the escritoire’s prised lid. “The only question is, did he get it? Come and see.”
Wyre followed Leighton over to the desk. Inside were rows of corked glass bottles. Squinting over the Runner’s shoulder, Wyre saw that each phial had been labelled in a spidery hand: Galls, Sulphate of Iron, Cobalt, Potash, Nitric Acid, Sulphur, Vinegar. Two larger compartments contained a Florence flask, and a quarter-pound bag of something chalky that puffed up in Leighton’s face when he touched it. “Our victim was quite the little chemist. Everything here you’d need to manufacture sympathetic ink.”
Wyre looked at him quizzically.
“Don’t tell me you never tried it as a boy? First draw a tree trunk and branches in ordinary ink, next add the leaves using a solution of cobalt. The page stays winter, but only till you play a brimstone under it, then spring and summer arrive at once. It’s not much of a code, though, if someone’s expecting it, which our assassin plainly was.” He pointed at the little pile of twisted spunks Wyre had crushed underfoot.
The Bow Street officer crossed to the hearth, and put his fingers into the ash, rubbing a little between his fingers. He held the residue up. “The killer was after encrypted letters, Kit. From our spymaster here . . .” He nodded at the corpse. “Came armed with a phosphorous bottle. After he activated the ink – ” he pointed to the hearth “ – he incinerated the evidence.” Leighton chopped his hands together, sending fine ash floating into the room.
“He did all that calmly after killing a man? Why not hot-foot it, read the letters somewhere safer.”
“Oh, I don’t think our man is given to panic. The real question is, who were the letters addressed to? But I don’t suppose we’ll know that till the intended recipients turn up, looking like our friend here.”
“You think there’ll be others?” He stared at the wax figure.
“I’m quite certain of it.” Leighton rose stiffly from the hearth. “Come on, we’ve done all we can here.”
As Wyre moved from the desk, he banged his shin against the upturned desk chair. Leaning over angrily, he grabbed a leg, intending to set the chair upright.
“Touch nothing
,” Leighton said quickly. “That’s a credo at Bow Street.”
Chastened, Wyre lowered the chair again. Then froze . . . The impact had caused a corner of the seat to become dislodged from its frame. “Wait a minute . . .” Using his fingers, he worked at the crack until first the corner, then the entire panel, lifted out, revealing a shallow cavity in which a neatly pressed envelope nestled. Wyre snatched it up, snapping the maroon bleb of sealing wax between his fingers.
Triumph turned to despair. The letter was blank.
Leighton smiled at him. “Remember what I said. Spring and summer come at once in this game.” He held his hand out to his constable, who produced a small German fire bottle and a box of spunks. The Runner played one around the lip of the fire bottle until, with a wet hiss, its tip spluttered into life.
Wyre felt like a man collared for a conjuring trick. He watched as the match burned down to Leighton’s thumbnail without emblazoning any furtive inscriptions. Two more attempts produced nothing. “Cockstand!” The Runner shook the last spunk out, handing the letter to Wyre with a pained expression.
The lawyer tilted it as Leighton had done, and similarly saw nothing. At a flatter angle, however . . . a silvery prismatic wash. Frowning deeply, he carried the sheet to the casement. In seconds, green letters, then whole words and sentences formed, as though his own thoughts were being thrown onto the page.
“Leighton, you really ought to see this . . .”
The Bow Street officer strode over. “The trigger’s not heat, it’s light. I was right to bring you along. Well, what does it say?”
The letter trembling in his fingers, Wyre read aloud.
My dear Sellis,
Yrs arrived unopened. Give thanks that England’s cabinet noir is less efficient than my master’s. You mustn’t despair. The Palace is not a prison, whatever they wish you to believe. Yr cause has been taken up by men of action & I shall have the pleasure of writing before too many days with encouraging news. Hold fast, and take comfort in the knowledge that your friends have not forgotten you. COULD NOT forget you. What does it matter if you are made to ride backwards? Suffer the indignity in the knowledge it must be short.
Yr friend,
Thomas
Wyre turned to the slumped body. “Pleased to meet you, Thomas. Or is it Sellis?”
“That bit’s easy. A member of the royal household wouldn’t doss in a dunghole like this. Which makes our corpse Thomas.” He let out a long breath. “Next question, what do we know about this Sellis character?”
“That he doesn’t like riding backwards?”
“Who does?” Leighton looked thoughtful for a moment. “But he needs to be warned.”
Wyre looked at the Runner.
“Even supposing the assassin remains in the dark about Mr Sellis’s existence, I very much doubt it’ll stay that way for long. Back-blows from Vere Street, Kit, that’s what this is. And it’s not over yet.” He rubbed his temples. “Anyone associated with Thomas and the Vere Street Club should consider themselves in the firing line.”
“Shouldn’t we go directly to the Palace?”
“Getting access to St James’s won’t be as easy as you imagine. The Palace has its own jurisdiction; they call it the Court of the Royal fucking Verge.” His face tightened. “I’ll need permission from the old bird just to approach the Verge.” (Wyre assumed the allusion was to Bow Street’s Chief Magistrate, Mr Read.) “Believe me, he won’t like it.” His face wrinkled. “Has to be done, though. It’s clear the reason Mr V.S.-frigging-C. got pinked lies somewhere at St James’s Palace.” He looked away. “Things are about to get complicated. Let’s keep the letter to ourselves for now, agreed?”
Wyre gave him a cautious nod. Leighton would know his business.
They made their way downstairs, followed at a respectful distance by the constable.
“Has this got anything to do with the New Bridge murder?” Wyre said, as they stepped out into the glare of Crispin Street. “I rather hoped you’d keep me abreast. Might be my ticket out of molly briefs.”
Leighton was unlocking his mechanical gelding. He grunted non-committally.
“You never even told me what your fly was investigating.”
“Vere Street,” the Runner said, suddenly grinning. “What else?”
26. The Lower Levels
Brockton heaved his bulk to its feet, and headed for the steps down to the coups. He held a handkerchief to his mouth. As the fever had spread street-by-street above, so it was putting out its tendrils below. It didn’t pay to take chances. He was a practical man.
Joanna’s disciples were talking of a tremendous judgement to come. Fiery lakes, monstrous apparitions, halos and mock-suns, companies of marching toads not seen since 1660. Much of the talk concerned the Tyrant, said to be assembling invasion barges across the channel. But Brockton had no time for such ranting, even though he had himself once seen a great light emanating from the peak of a mountain. He’d been twelve. Some would have made much of it, but he’d had other fish to fry. He still had. And, since that unexpected interview with Best, his fish were sodomites.
It was said that in France crimes such as blasphemy, heresy, sacrilege and witchcraft weren’t prosecuted. Even the detestable sins of incest and sodomy regularly went unpunished. The fiddle-faddling man of feeble organs prospered in that nation of heaped ordure. The French would make heroes of the Vere Street gang. But sodomy would remain a felony in England. Perfect sodomy, in which the sodomite ejaculated in the anus, as well as its imperfect varieties. It would remain a felony because it was a true crime.
Puffing, Brockton reached the bottom of the tightly winding steps. Earlier that morning, he’d interrogated Cooke, keeper of The White Swan. The interview had borne fruit, if not quite as much as he’d hoped. The reptile clung to most of the sordid mental freight he called his ‘names’. He had, though, given up a few identities as tokens of good will. Men who’d camped at The White Swan for nights on end, respectable men who’d pay handsomely rather than risk being dragged into public view. Brockton had written these names down, and thanked the monster.
The next prisoner – he squinted through the cell-door grate – was pressed from different clay. Where Cooke’s was a rough, solid presence, this Dr Aspinall seemed truer to type: massless and unphysical. He motioned to Mr Suter the head gaoler, who adjusted the long-handled pistol in his belt, and reached for his key.
Brockton waited until the heavy door had closed behind him, and Suter’s footsteps had receded to faint thuds, before setting his ledger down on the cell’s low wooden bench. Then he lowered himself down next to the captive, so their elbows were almost touching. With a priest’s respect for silence, he said nothing. He was in no hurry. For men in Aspinall’s position, time was something that was done to them.
“In sermons throughout the city,” he began at length, “they’re calling the earthquake the inevitable corn of an unbending harvest of vice. You and your Vere Street friends are the link between sin and catastrophe . . . but the law will uncouple you.” He watched the prisoner’s eyes grow round. “You’ve finally committed a crime worthy of your monstrosity. We should thank you for giving us something to purge.” Brockton looked levelly at the prisoner. “They say a dog that laps the piss of a hanged man dies within the week. I would advise you to draw up a will, but sodomites cannot make a testament.”
If the physician seemed about to speak, the impulse deserted him.
Brockton tapped his ledger book. “They mean to hang you, Aspinall.” He watched the prisoner’s face drain. “However, it might – ” Brockton tilted his head “ – might be possible to bring you through. Naturally, for a consideration.”
Some men were said to be able to tell coins from the handling, a few from the mere smelling alone. Talents of gold, talents of silver. Brockton named his sum. Steep, yes. But the others had managed it. The prisoner buried his face in his hands, and through sobs insisted he couldn’t raise a quarter of it. Brockton struggled to his feet,
using Aspinall’s shoulder for support. He said no more. Such claims belonged to the process of compromise, and here there was no middle ground. Besides, Mr Best had been quite clear. Not all the beasts could be allowed to slip away. Some two or three would have to bear the brunt. The question now – for Aspinall, the only question – was whether the physician would be among them.
“Are you married, monster?”
Aspinall lifted his eyes.
“Engaged, perhaps?”
A wary nod.
“Then there may still be a way. I’ll call on your betrothed, have a word with her father. See if we can’t come to some arrangement.”
A faithful lawyer was like gold thrice tried in the fire.
The physician groaned. Mr Crawford wouldn’t –
Brockton took the physician’s hand in his own. Its warmth amazed him.
27. Case Notes
With deep repose of the conscious organs, the pictures revived by the mind should be considered less remembrances of a vast reservoir of events than attempts to overcome them . . .
His own words, meant for his psychical treatise, composed on the very desk that now stood in a damp cell in the city’s Courthouse. The sun sieving through the high grate that opened onto the press yard threw a Coptic cross over the stained flagstones.
“Answer me!” barked the Judge, a knotted towel hanging from his head. “Are you a French quaint or not?”
The sworn jury of two, one swarthy with slow, sunken features, the other pale and sharp, had pinned Aspinall to the ground. They cocked their heads attentively.
“Nothing t’ improve his case, m’lud,” the leathery one said.
The jurors hauled the physician to his feet to hear the verdict.
For coughing maliciously, for being a Frenchie and for attempting to sodomize his cellmates while they slept, the punishment was death.
“Pull th’ dung beetle down,” instructed the Judge.
Aspinall was battered savagely to the floor again. Groaning, he watched as the legs of his desk chair were lowered over his head and shoulders. The jurors bound his elbows to the chair legs using shreds of his own shirt. Aspinall flailed, but was firmly pinioned. The faces of his tormentors floated above the woven cane seat. He gasped as a boot landed in his belly. Someone laughed: quick, wheezing spasms.
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