In the shadows sprawled beneath a canopy of elm trees, a slender black shape glided silently through the distant gravestones.
He stood up and looked, but it had vanished.
Thraxton dropped the walking stick and took off running.
As he reached the path he glimpsed it again, fleetingly. It seemed to be moving in a direction slanting diagonally away from him. Thraxton abandoned the path and crashed through the underbrush. It was darker beneath the canopy of trees. Although the cemetery had only been open a few years, many of the graves here were already overgrown. Thraxton leaped over graves in his haste, eyes scanning ahead for another sight of the black wraith. He spotted it, barely fifty feet away, gliding away from him. He lost sight momentarily as he dodged around a stand of elm trees, but kept running. He leapt over another grave and almost crashed into a dark crouching form.
A woman in a veil and black mourning dress knelt at a handsome marble grave while she placed flowers upon it. She looked up with a startled expression, eyes wide, mouth open as Thraxton stood over her, panting and flushed.
It took a moment for them to recognize one another.
“Mrs. Pennethorne!” Thraxton blurted. He suddenly noticed the fresh flowers laid upon the grave and the name Charles Pennethorne engraved on the handsome marble headstone. In her widow’s black lace dress and black bonnet, Thraxton had mistaken Constance for the specter he had seen the evening before.
“I… I… please, forgive me,” Thraxton stammered. “I did not mean to intrude. I thought you… I mean, I most humbly beg your pardon.”
Mortified by his own bumbling stupidity, Thraxton bowed slightly and was about to take his leave when Constance rose and graciously offered her hand.
“Not at all,” she said, smiling to show she had recovered from her initial surprise. “Once again, Lord Thraxton, your entrance displays great dramatic flair.”
Thraxton felt himself blushing and thought, Congratulations, Geoffrey. You’ve made a complete arse of yourself.
She laughed at his obvious embarrassment. “No, it is good to see you again. I have not forgotten your generosity at the British Museum.”
Thraxton gently shook her hand and nodded politely at the grave. “Your beloved late husband, I take it?”
She nodded.
“Forgive me. I shall intrude upon your grief no further.”
He turned to leave, but she put a hand on his arm. “No, please. I was just about to leave. My friends are waiting at the gate. Perhaps you would be gallant enough to walk with me?”
And so the pair strolled together along the leaf-strewn paths. It was considerably warmer in the sunshine. Were it not for the bare trees and the dense carpet of fallen leaves, it could almost have been taken for a spring day.
“You are here to visit a loved one, Lord Thraxton?”
“No, I come here to write,” Thraxton replied. “I find the melancholy atmosphere of Highgate, all this sorrow and brooding loss turned to stone, conjures my poetic muse.”
Constance smiled. “Ah, you are a poet?”
“There are those who would argue the point, but yes, I title myself as such. It is so much more agreeable than admitting that I basically do nothing at all.”
Constance could not hold back a wry smile, which Thraxton took as a sign of encouragement. “Forgive my boldness, Mrs. Pennethorne, but I must confess that upon seeing you at your husband’s grave, I was struck by how your great natural beauty was rendered quite transcendent by a widow’s grief.”
“You are terrible flatterer, Lord Thraxton.”
“It would seem a sin to keep such pulchritude wrapped in a widow’s weeds forever. I believe there are seasons in all things—life and death. Perhaps when your season of grief has passed, you will be free to open your heart again to another love among the living?”
Constance stopped and looked up into his face. “I may, in time, love another. But I will never stop loving my husband. I do not believe that love ends at the tomb door.”
“Why, yes,” he hurried to add. “Of course. Remembrance for the dead is a noble thing.”
“Not merely remembrance,” she corrected. “My husband is still very much a part of my life. I spoke with him just last Wednesday.”
Thraxton smiled, and then quickly dropped the expression lest she think he was mocking her. Still, he did not know quite what to make of her statement, so he assumed an expression of serious attentiveness. “You are speaking poetically, I imagine?”
“Not at all.”
Thraxton’s expression betrayed his puzzlement. Constance resumed walking and he kept pace with her. She flashed him a wistful little smile and asked, “Do you believe in the survival of the soul after death?”
The words triggered a jolt of electricity through Thraxton.
“I very much want to.” For some reason Thraxton felt compelled to tell Constance about the dark wraith and his near brush with death, leaving out all details of how he and Algernon wound up at Highgate. Constance listened attentively throughout, her expression thoughtful but never revealing whether she thought he was deluded or not. By the time he finished his story they had reached the cemetery’s gated entrance. An elderly couple sat on one of the wooden benches, and now they arose as Thraxton and Constance approached. It occurred to him that he had seen them someplace before, and then he remembered the evening at the British Museum.
“Ah,” he said. “The inevitable Wakefields.”
“Yes, I do hope I haven’t kept them waiting too long.” She turned to Thraxton and offered her hand. It was obvious their tête-à-têtes had concluded. “It was so good to see you again, Lord Thraxton.”
Thraxton doffed his top hat and bowed as he kissed her hand.
“I came here seeking only silence and contemplation,” Thraxton said. “Who would have guessed I would find serene beauty as well.”
Constance blushed a little at the compliment. She turned and walked toward the waiting Wakefields. Thraxton watched as she shared a few words with the elderly couple that he could not catch from where he stood. Constance finished and walked back to speak with him.
“Lord Thraxton,” she said. “Do you know anything of the spiritualist movement?”
The question surprised him. “I… a little. What I read in the newspapers.”
“We are having a séance this Saturday evening. If you are free to attend, you may find it enlightening.”
She pressed a card into his hand that bore an address in Mayfair not far from his own home.
“Yes, thank you. I believe I am free.”
“Wonderful.”
Constance started to walk away again when she remembered something and turned back.
“Oh, and do be sure to bring your friend with you—Mister Hyde-Davies.”
10
AN ILL-FAVORED AUGURY
The carriage was black, worn and shabby—like hundreds of its ilk that juddered along the bumpy cobblestone streets of London. Its anonymity had been chosen for precisely that reason. Likewise, the rumpled sack of rags slouched in the driver’s seat was a gin-addled consumptive whose memory could be relied upon to be unreliable.
Another deliberate choice.
The carriage was drawn to the curb to allow traffic to squeeze past. Inside, Doctor Silas Garrette lounged on the scuffed leather seat. He palmed a pack of Tarot cards in one hand and now he laid out the cards on the seat beside him: a Five of Pentacles, a Hanged Man, the Death card, a Six of Wands… he turned the final card and his jaw clenched.
The Tower, struck by lightning, collapsing masonry tumbling down on several terrified figures below.
Garrette ground his molars, then swept up the cards with a deft movement.
Overhead, the driver coughed liquidly, hawked and spat. A gleaming wad of phlegm flew past the carriage window and splattered in the gutter.
The doctor sat plunged in thought, the deck of Tarot cards flexing in his hand. What he had seen in the reading disturbed him greatly. He began to shuffle
them for a second reading, but was interrupted by the bruising drum of knuckles on the carriage door. He looked up at the face of a filthy gorilla framed in the window. The door opened and the carriage listed on its saggy springs as Mordecai Fowler squeezed aboard, his rank stink crowding in with him. The mobsman oofed as he sank onto the worn seat opposite.
“Well?” Garrette said. “I trust you have it?”
Fowler lifted his bowler hat and resettled it, offering a slack grin. “Ah, that,” Fowler began. “We had a bit of bother—”
“Bother?” Silas Garrette’s face stiffened like hardening cement. “What do you mean, bother?”
“We had company.”
“Company? At Highgate? In the middle of the night?”
“We almost ’ad her out the ground when this moxie shows up… and then this toff wiv a walking stick. He starts a barney, but Snudge gives him the cosh. I’m ready to finish ’im off when the sexton comes running wiv a bloody great gun. Nearly took me ’ead off.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” the doctor barked, hurling a look of pure death.
“A toff it were. Wiv a fancy walkin’ stick. He gimme this. Fowler tilted his head to show off a livid purple welt along his jawline. Fowler growled, “Ever I see that barsterd again…”
The doctor’s brows arched skeptically. “He’s not dead?”
Fowler squirmed. “No. Yeah. I dunno. Most like he is.”
“Most like?” The doctor’s lip curled.
Fowler gave a noncommittal shrug. “Good as, I reckon. Good as dead.”
“But you failed in your primary mission.”
Fowler forced a cheery laugh. “Not to worry, guvnor. No shortage of stiffs in this manor. The peelers dredge a fresh moxie out the Thames every other day—”
“Fool!” Garrette spat. “This was no ordinary corpse. I can procure the stinking carcass of a diseased whore from any dozen of you flesh-peddlers. This was a unique specimen!”
“Oh, you mean the stillborn? The mooncalf that done her in?”
“Do not ever speak that word in my presence!”
Fowler failed to see the rising anger in the doctor’s face and blundered on: “Hundreds of them sort flushed down the sewers every day.”
The doctor lunged across the carriage with a demon’s ferocious speed and Fowler could only squawk to find the wicked keen edge of a scalpel pressed against his Adam’s apple. With his free hand the mobsman stealthily groped for the gnarled handle of Mister Pierce, only to feel the leather scabbard part in two and slide away as the spike hit the carriage floor with a thunk. Fowler’s eyes bugged. He had seen men who were fast with a blade before, but the doctor moved quick as a nightmare.
“Listen to me, Fowler,” Garrette hissed. “I need these… children… for my studies. They are especially precious to me.” In the dim carriage, the twin rose disks of his pince-nez glowed luminous. The doctor’s posture finally relaxed. He drew back into the shadows on his side of the carriage, a venomous eel withdrawing into its sea cave. Fowler caught a brief flash of silver as the blade slipped back into the doctor’s coat pocket in one fluid motion.
The mobsman shuddered and rubbed stubby fingers along his prickling windpipe, expecting them to come away red, but finding no blood. When he at last found his voice again, Fowler muttered: “I’ll keep me ears and eyes peeled.”
He rummaged the floorboards until he snatched up Mister Pierce and the flapping ends of the leather scabbard the scalpel had cleanly cut in two—without so much as nicking his belly. Fowler heaved his bulk out of the carriage door and was about to bang it shut when the doctor froze him with a word.
“Mordecai—”
Fowler hurled a guarded scowl back at the shadowy figure. Coins chinked and then a flung purse smacked him in the chest. Fowler grunted and caught it by reflex. A fat coin purse filled his hand.
“You know what I am seeking,” the doctor said. “Find it and I can be even more generous.”
Fowler touched the brim of his battered bowler in badly feigned respect and slouched away, face fixed in a mocking leer.
Silas Garrette leaned back against the worn seat cushions, his eyes slitted in thought. The nostrils of his hawkish nose flared as he snorted, partly from disgust and partly to flush the stink of Fowler’s ripeness from his lungs. The lumpen buffoon had encountered some kind of gentleman in the cemetery. The details somersaulted in Garrette’s head. A gentleman? A walking stick? He thought of the duel and the encounter with the brash Lord Thraxton loomed in his mind, but he shook it off. Too bizarre a coincidence. But when he touched a hand to the Tarot deck in his pocket, the cards seemed to pulse under his fingertips.
There was no such thing as coincidence. This could prove a bad augury indeed.
Garrette reached up and knuckled the ceiling of the carriage. The driver shook himself awake and stung the horses’ ears with the tip of his lash. The carriage lunged forward and the heavy London traffic soon swallowed them up.
11
A ROMP IN EDEN
The gardens at Kew spread over hundreds of acres of land. But its crowning glory was the greenhouses: glittering edifices of curved glass and ironwork that scintillated in the sun. The largest of these was the Palm House, the design of which presaged that most famous architectural triumph of the time, the Crystal Palace.
While the wan September sun was scarcely able to warm the chill from the day, inside the Palm House the climate was turgidly Amazonian. It needed to be to sustain the towering palm trees, breadfruit, elephant grasses, and the thousands of exotic plant species that grew in a burst of equatorial greenery quite dazzling to the senses. The effect of entering the Palm House was always remarkable, but especially so on a chilly day, for in a single stride one passed from the dull browns and muted earth tones of autumnal England into the humid fecundity of a tropical rainforest.
The Palm House was the bailiwick of Algernon Hyde-Davies, who was employed there as head botanist. It was his job to oversee the cataloguing and cultivation of all the thousands of new and hitherto unknown species of flora that arrived each day, shipped in from every corner of Victoria’s sprawling empire.
On this particular morning Algernon was in one of the smaller greenhouses overseeing the transplantation of seedlings ready to be moved into the Palm House. His staff of gardeners stood at a long table while they presented wooden flats filled with hundreds of seedlings for Algernon’s perusal. He moved along the line like a drill officer inspecting his troops.
“Too much light,” Algernon said, eyeing a flat filled with green seedlings whose leaves all had brown tips. “Try moving them to a more shaded area.”
“Yes, Mister Hyde-Davies,” replied the gardener.
Algernon moved onto the next flat. These were stunted and leaning every which way.
“Oh, dear,” Algernon exclaimed. He tugged one of the seedlings free from the soil and inspected it. The stem of the plant was long and thin, the tiny leaves half the size they should have been. The roots had black fungus growing on them.
“See that, Baines?” Algernon said holding up the seedling to the gardener, a young man of eighteen with a red spotty complexion and fiery ginger hair. “Stunted growth, small leaves, black on the root system. We all know what that means, do we not?”
He looked at Baines, awaiting an answer. The young man’s face reddened further.
“Er, I suppose.” Several emotions swept across Baines’ face: embarrassment, frustration, and finally gloomy resignation. “I, I dunno, sir.”
“You planted them too deep,” Algernon gently chided. “The poor plant took all its energy trying to dig itself out of the ground. You’re not burying a corpse, remember. No need to plant them six feet deep. They’re just little seedlings. Delicate babies. They need to see the sun just as much as you and I. Understand?”
The young man dropped his eyes to the pathetic display of withered seedlings he stood behind.
Algernon clapped a hand on the younger man’s shoulder and rea
ssured in an avuncular tone, “Don’t worry, Baines. You’ll get it soon enough. Before we’re finished I’ll make a first rate gardener out of you.” He moved on to the next box of seedlings. “Now,” he said brightly. “How are these coming along?”
Before the gardener could answer, Parkinson, one of Algernon’s junior botanists came rushing into the greenhouse in a state of agitation, his face flushed.
“Mister Hyde-Davies, sir!”
“What ever’s the matter, Parkinson?”
Parkinson was out of breath and so excited he could barely talk. “There’s a man, sir. In the Palm House. A naked man!”
Algernon’s expression showed his total bewilderment. “A naked man, you say? In the Palm House?”
Parkinson nodded his head rapidly. “Naked, sir. Totally starkers.”
Algernon couldn’t quite believe his ears. “A naked man—” He suddenly stopped as an awful premonition came over him. No. He wouldn’t! Would he? Not even he would do such a thing. But then again, who else?
* * *
Algernon and Parkinson sprinted along the winding pathways of the Palm House.
“Mister Greenley’s chasing him, sir,” Parkinson yelled, “but he’s a slippery fellow. Look, there’s some of his togs!”
They found a gray silk top hat crowning a ficus tree. Ten feet on a pair of boots and socks lay where the owner had kicked them off. Farther still a pair of men’s trousers dangled from the lowest limb of a palm tree. They continued on, finding various items of hastily tossed-aside clothing. Finally Algernon spotted something thrust into the soft soil of a planter—a walking stick topped with a golden phoenix rising from the flames. Now there could be no doubt as to who the naked man was.
Algernon snatched the walking stick from the soil. He looked around the Palm House agitatedly. Seeing nothing he looked up at the glass domed ceiling and yelled at the top of his lungs.
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