by Alex Grecian
“You don’t?”
“He does,” Fiona said. “But it’s not why we’re here.”
“I’m sorry,” Hammersmith said, “but we were actually wondering about a cuff link. Mr Goodpenny sent us to you.”
“Goodpenny! You don’t say. How is the old boy?”
“Seems to be doing well, I think.”
“Can’t hear a word, you know.”
“He does appear to struggle.”
“But a more pleasant fellow you’ve never met. Excellent company, if you only keep your mouth shut and let him do the talking. Otherwise it can be a bit frustrating, the attempt to communicate and all that. We take the rail out together to Cornwall and it’s the best trip I make all year. Look forward to it for weeks in advance.”
“You buy silver there?”
“Silver, yes . . . But specifically I buy silver items, not the raw stuff itself. Family there fashions the most exquisite little things.”
“A family? Do you mind telling us what their name is?”
Parks wagged a finger at them. “If I tell everybody where I get my wares, nobody’ll need me anymore, will they? Go right to the source, won’t they?”
“I suppose so,” Hammersmith said. “Can you tell us, what kind of items do they supply you with?”
“All kinds.”
“Like cuff links,” Fiona said. “Isn’t that right?”
“I deal primarily in hats, of course, but some of my better customers are also in need of accessories and prefer to come to me for everything: yes, as you say, cuff links, as well as collar stays, the odd set of buttons or fasteners, even a small selection of walking sticks. All that sort of thing. And I’m glad to stock the stuff. Keeps ’em coming back to me.” He paused to pour more tea for them all. “Goodpenny picks up a few items there as well, although we began these trips of ours because he was looking for letter openers and the like for his own concern. I was only too glad to go along with him. Not sure either of us makes a profit when all’s said and done, but it’s worth it anyway. We have grand adventures, Goodpenny and me. Have I told you the story of the goat on the tracks?”
“We’ve only just met you,” Fiona said. “You haven’t told us any stories.”
Parks sat back and blinked in surprise. “Why, you’re absolutely right. I forget I don’t already know everyone in the world. And here I’ve forgotten my manners as well. As you’ve no doubt guessed by now, my name’s Andrew Parks. And you’ve met my daughter, Hannah. Should’ve introduced you.”
“I’m Fiona Kingsley and this is my friend Nevil Hammersmith.”
“Hammersmith, you say? Unusual name. Never heard it on a person before now. I’d’ve guessed you were Welsh. There’s a trace of it in your voice.”
“Well, you’re certainly not hard of hearing, Mr Parks. I am from Wales, though my family wasn’t originally. I was born there.”
“I thought so. I’ve spent a bit of time in Wales, now and then, here and there. Do you know a gent name of Bamford?”
“Bamford? There’s more than a few Bamfords round there, but that might be my uncle.”
“Wonderful fellow, if it’s the same Bamford. Just wonderful. He ran his wagon over my foot once.”
“Why, that must be my uncle. It’s just what he would do.”
“He didn’t intend to do it, of course. Terribly apologetic about it.”
“How odd. I was only just thinking about him.”
Parks turned to Fiona. “Coincidences abound if you open your mind to them. Did you say your name is Kingsley?”
“Yes. Fiona Kingsley.”
“Related to Bernard, by chance?”
“Dr Bernard Kingsley is my father.”
“Oh, he’s a great customer of mine. Any daughter of the good doctor’s is a friend to me.”
“Why,” Fiona said, “you do indeed know everyone in the world, Mr Parks!”
He smiled at her. “Feel as though I do, now I’ve met the two of you. What a delightful young couple you are. And here I’d despaired of meeting anyone new today. But you’ve actually come to ask me something, haven’t you? If you’ll tell me what it is, I’ll do my best to help.”
Hammersmith fished the cuff link once more out of his pocket and handed it to the friendly hatter. Parks held it out to the fire, letting the light dance over its surfaces. It glowed yellow and orange, bits of blue flashed off its crenulations. The monogrammed initials stood out black against the reflective surface.
“I remember this piece quite well. It and its mate, both. Bought by a woman for her son’s birthday. Strange thing, though, she was found dead only a week later. Fished out of the Thames, all cut up. It was such an odd occurrence that it stuck fast in my mind.”
Hammersmith tried not to seem too excited. He stared Fiona down and saw her swallow her happy smile. He didn’t want the hatter to become guarded. The man had shown not the slightest sign of caginess, but Hammersmith had seen witnesses grow vague once they understood how valuable their information was.
“So you did engrave this,” Hammersmith said.
“No,” Parks said. “Mr Goodpenny did.”
“But,” Fiona said, “he has no record of having done it. He looked it up in his ledger for us.”
“Oh, he keeps terrible records, Goodpenny does. Just the worst at it. Lovely fellow, but terribly disorganized. He catches up his records on the train, so it’s . . . what, once a year? Twice? And all by memory. Completely useless, that ledger of his. But no, I remember this one well. He did these cuff links up for this woman, she was in an awful hurry for it, and then she dies immediately once she’s got the things. Might’ve been on her son’s birthday she died, for all I know. If not, it would’ve been right around that time. Must’ve been an ’orrible thing for the lad, mustn’t it?”
Hammersmith heard a trace of a Mancunian dialect sneaking into the hatter’s voice as he grew agitated. He wasn’t the only person whose speech betrayed his origins.
“Why wouldn’t Mr Goodpenny have remembered to tell us that himself?”
“I’m sure he would if you went back to him and nudged his memory. And I’d bet he does got it in that ledger book somewheres, but these initials are A-R, so he’d probably have the customer written down as Helen Lidwedge or Calvin Whichway. I keep telling him to get a horn, hold it up to his ear when people speak.”
“Those names,” Hammersmith said. “Helen Lidwedge, Calvin Whichway, they’re similar. Why did you pick them?”
“Only because they sound funny to me, I suppose,” Parks said. “I appreciate a good Dickensian name, same as anyone.”
“Ah,” Hammersmith said. He was a great admirer of Dickens himself.
“Also,” Parks said, “because both those names sound a bit like Alan Ridgway, don’t they?”
“Alan Ridgway?”
“A-R,” Fiona said. “Alan Ridgway.”
“You remember the name?”
“Because the woman was found right after,” Parks said. “If not for that . . . who knows?”
“So the woman’s son was Alan Ridgway and this is his cuff link,” Hammersmith said.
“I’d say it is,” Parks said.
“And she was found dead . . . It sounds as if she was murdered after accepting this order from Mr Goodpenny.”
Parks set down his teacup and waved his hands in the air. “Now, don’t jump to any conclusions. Mr Goodpenny wouldn’t murder a rabbit for his supper. I didn’t tell you all that so you could go and—”
“No,” Fiona said. “That’s not what Nevil was suggesting at all.” She was sitting nearest the fire and her still-damp hair shimmered gold.
“She’s right,” Hammersmith said. “I didn’t mean to imply anything of the sort. I was merely trying to figure out what happened and in what order. If this cuff link is related to those other murders, and I think
it likely now that it is, then this Mrs Ridgway might have been the first victim.”
“Other murders?”
Quickly, Hammersmith and Fiona filled the hatter in on the three prostitutes who had been found in Whitechapel, and Hammersmith’s discovery of the cuff link on the alley floor. Parks listened intently, then blew out a big gust of air and rubbed the back of his neck as if he’d been sitting in the hot sun.
“I’d say this calls for some real drink,” he said. He staggered out of the room and returned with a bottle of whiskey. He unstoppered it and poured into their teacups, then raised his own cup and drained it before sitting back down. He had the look of someone who had just bumped his head against the lintel and hadn’t yet got his bearings back.
“So,” he said at last. “Do y’think this Ridgway fellow ever got his cuff links before his mum was offed?”
“Could be,” Hammersmith said. “Or it could be that someone took them from the mother before she was killed. Either way, it looks more and more like a clue after all.”
“Thanks to you, Mr Parks,” Fiona said.
The hatter smiled at her, but he didn’t look happy.
“I’d hate to think she was killed just ’cause someone wanted a cuff link. What an ’orrible waste that’d be.”
Hammersmith sipped at his teacup full of whiskey, his nose full of the fumes. He watched as Fiona pretended to drink, but she set the cup quickly back down and made a face. He stifled a laugh and stood up.
“We’ve bothered you enough today,” he said. “And Miss Kingsley’s got an appointment that I’ve kept her away from all morning. Thank you very much for your help, Mr Parks.”
The hatter stood, too, and shook Hammersmith’s hand. “If there’s anything else, please don’t hesitate to drop in on me. I hope you catch this blackguard. Anyone who’d do that to a woman over a coupla pieces of silver . . .”
“Actually,” Fiona said, “I did have one more question, if you don’t mind, sir.”
“Not at all, young lady. What can I do for you?”
“Earlier you said you have a selection of walking sticks? Canes?”
“I do. Not many, but a few. It’s a sideline, you know.”
“Of course. I was wondering if I could take a look at them.”
“You don’t think any of ’em were used for . . . used for murder.”
“Oh, no,” Fiona said. “Strictly personal reasons. Not related at all.”
Parks’s face resumed its natural friendly expression and he motioned for her to follow, talking over his shoulder as he led the way out of the cozy little back room. “As I said, not many of ’em, but what I’ve got’s quality stuff. Did you have a price in mind?”
“I have two crowns.”
“Let’s see what we can do for that. And I haven’t told you the story of the goat on the train tracks yet. I promised you that, didn’t I?” Their voices faded, but Hammersmith lingered for a moment by the fire.
He nodded to the hatter’s daughter as she reappeared to pick up the crockery and the leftover scones. She blushed and hurried away and, embarrassed, Hammersmith hurried after Fiona.
35
Hatty Pitt finally kicked the last loop of rope from her hips down past her knees and ankles and off the tips of her toes. She was now able to buck her body up and down, loosening the ropes around her waist and chest. She hadn’t seen or heard a thing from the world outside the bedroom since her faceless husband had been dragged past her door and away down the stairs. She worked her body up and down, from side to side, patiently inching her way up toward the wall behind her bed. At last her head touched the wall and she kept thrashing, gently thrashing, careful not to make too much noise. Whoever had taken John Charles’s face away, whoever was wearing the plague mask, could come back at any moment to do the same to her. Her neck bent, and bent further as she pushed against the wall, and began to burn with pain. She tried moving diagonally now across the bed. At first she hardly moved at all, and she almost gave up. Her stomach hurt, the muscles clenched and sore, the back of her head hurt, her calves and ankles hurt. But she persevered. Gradually, her neck became more comfortable and she noticed there was slack in the ropes that she hadn’t realized was there. She kept up her steady movements until she was able to roll from one side of the bed to the other. And then she stopped and began worming down the length of the bed, undulating from the waist, not caring that her skirts were riding up. If Eugenia Merrilow was willing to show the world everything, then Hatty Pitt could, by God, abandon modesty long enough to save her own life. She willed herself to flow from the top of the bed like a force of nature, like a stream that had been dammed and was now free, she was a body of water in the shape of a woman. The ropes dragged painfully up and over her breasts, but she kept moving. She tucked in her chin and closed her eyes and ignored the pain in her nose as it was tugged up and out of place. She heard it pop and felt a spurt of blood. She kept moving. Then she could taste the blood, spilling over her lips, down her chin and her throat. Blood soaked the ropes and trailed back into her eyes and her hair. Still she kept moving. And then the ropes were gone.
She sat up.
She swung her legs off the bed and tiptoed to the escritoire next to her bedroom door and opened it slowly, thankful that John Charles had kept the hinges oiled. There was still blood in her eyes and she blinked rapidly, trying to see through intermittent slits, her eyelashes painting her vision red. She groped about until she found a clean cloth and wiped her eyes with it, then pressed it to her nose while she found another cloth. The first cloth was soaked now and she threw it on the floor, squeezed the fresh cloth against her nostrils, and held it there.
Barefoot, she moved silently to the door and stuck her head out, looked both ways up and down the empty landing. She crept without breathing, willing herself invisible, pretending she was not, in fact, moving at all, only drifting on air, to the stairs and down them, letting the gentle pull of gravity dictate the speed of her progress. A feather on a light breeze.
At the bottom of the steps, she had only to make a ninety-degree turn to the left and she would practically be at the front door. She would be out on the street in an instant; she could find help. Instead, she turned right, stopped, and stared down the length of the hallway. She moved her hand away from her face. The cloth stayed behind, stuck there, blood already drying along her upper lip and on her cheeks, and she wrenched it painfully away, ignoring the sparks she saw in her peripheral vision. There was a lot of blood on the cloth, but she could still see clean patches between the liquid red and she hoped that meant the bleeding had slowed. She turned the cloth over and applied pressure once more to her throbbing nose. She could hear someone talking at the end of the passage, low melodic whispers, and she listened. A man was in her kitchen; he was singing. She couldn’t make out the words and so she crept down the passage and peered around the doorjamb.
For years to come, the scene she saw at her kitchen table would return to haunt her dreams. The small man, his sweaty hair plastered across his forehead, sat with his back partially to her. She was looking at his profile, his narrow nose and jutting chin. Part of his ear was missing and the skin had grown back in a shiny pink smooth ridge over the cartilage. There was a plate in front of him piled with the biscuits Hatty had baked the evening before, crumbs scattered all over the table and on the floor at his feet, where his boots had spread mucky streaks and clods of soil. This little man was singing, though his mouth was full, and he sprayed bits of mashed dough out onto himself and the table. She thought she recognized the song, but it was hard to make it out through his mouthful of stale biscuit.
. . . But there was one of the children
Who could not join in the play
And a little beggar maiden
Watched for him day by day.
He paused to swallow and crammed another biscuit whole into his mouth, munched, and sang. An old-fashioned
plague mask rested on the floor by his feet, propped up against a leg of his chair, and there was a wicked-looking knife on the table within easy reach. Hatty had avoided looking at the other end of the table, though she knew what she’d see there. She could almost make it out already, from the corner of her eye. Finally, she tore her gaze away from the singing man . . .
She came again to the garden;
She saw the children play.
But the little white face had vanished,
The little feet gone away.
John Charles was propped upright in his chair, his arms leaning casually on the table. There was a place setting in front of him, a single untouched biscuit on his plate. His skull grinned across at the singing man, a rapt audience of one. Pink streaks of blood were smeared across the pale bone, and ragged bits of flesh hung off his neck down around his exposed spine like some grotesque collar.
Still the little man sang:
She crept away to her corner
Down by the murky stream.
And the pale pale face in the garden
Shown through her restless dream.
Hatty couldn’t help herself. She gasped. The man stopped singing immediately, the words of his song: . . . through her restless dream, echoing in the empty kitchen, and he swung his head round to stare at her, his cheeks bulging with biscuits.
And then he was on his feet, the curved knife in his hand, his chair thrown back against the wall. Hatty dropped the cloth from her face and watched it for one frozen moment as it fluttered to the floor, then she turned and ran. She heard her feet slapping against the hardwood and—it sounded like he was right behind her, catching up to her—the clomp-clomp-clomp of the little man’s heavy boots. Inanely, she thought about the dirt chunking off his boots, how hard she would have to work to clean the floor. She rounded the bottom of the staircase and there was an opportunity to look back, to see how close the man was, but she didn’t. She focused instead on the front door and she didn’t break her stride, though she could feel that her nose was gushing again, blood coursing in rivulets, splashing off her chest, spattering against the ground. She slipped on her blood, but reached out for the newel post and caught her balance and then she banged straight into the closed door and scrabbled for the knob. Behind her, somewhere back in the passage between this door and the kitchen, she heard a strange barking noise. She had seen a seal once at the circus, when she was a little girl. It had sounded like this. But she didn’t turn to see why there was a seal in her house. She concentrated on turning the doorknob, which seemed to revolve in slow motion, slick with her blood, and then the door was swinging open and she was through it and it was raining on her. Rain was smashing into her forehead and into her eyes. It felt wonderful and cool.