By Gaslight

by Steven Price

  Of course. I only just thought, perhaps—

  Ah. No.

  He was a tall man, though thin, and he stepped forward now and loomed over Foole. There was in his gesture both threat and coiled restraint and Foole felt the railing bite into his ribs and he cleared his throat and then he gave the man the watch. Something sharp and painful turned over inside him as he did so.

  The phrenologist held it up to the light, opened it, closed it with a click, then shut his clawlike fist around it and slipped it into his waistcoat in a single smooth motion.

  Foole made a pained face. I always clear a debt, he said.

  Indeed, sir.

  Foole turned and regarded the low roofline of the landing stage at Pierhead, the wide-planked boardwalk just coming visible there, the dock offices looming up behind. Upriver he could see the squat sooty brickwork of the Albert Dock. The air felt cold, grim.

  And how long do you mean to stay in Liverpool, sir, if I may be so bold? the phrenologist asked. You’ll be staying at the Adelphi, I trust?

  We’re travelling up to London this evening. On the London North Western.

  Excellent, excellent. May I recommend the American Bar, at the Criterion in Piccadilly?

  Foole grunted. And you are returning home, I take it.

  To my practice, yes. I have been visiting a most fascinating collection of Indian skulls in Boston. Most remarkable. Foole watched the fingers of the man’s left hand shift in his waistcoat, turning and turning his watch.

  It is an instrument of some personal value, Foole said after a moment. He nodded at the man’s pocket. Perhaps we might negotiate it back, at some future date? At interest, of course.

  The phrenologist withdrew his hand from his pocket, smoothed his whiskers, peered out at the cranes and tackle swaying on their ropes at the freight docks. I think we might come to some agreement, sir. I would not wish to deprive you of something you value so highly. This is my visiting card. Should you ever have need of a physician in Liverpool, or simply wish to pass an evening in company, I should be delighted.

  I fear I couldn’t afford it. The evening, that is.

  You might win your timepiece back.

  I might lose my shirt.

  The phrenologist made a show of inspecting the smaller man’s collar and cuffs. Mm, he said with a smile. Not likely.

  Foole was all at once tired of it. The dark outlines of the ramps, the arcades of the landing pier slid nearer.

  The phrenologist regarded him. You do not have the spirit of a gambler, sir.

  Foole smiled tightly. No one does, he said.

  It was a steel-plated behemoth inclined to roll with a displacement of just over seven thousand tons and a single screw and twin smokestacks that ran hot. The crossing had taken all of eleven days despite the black weather and the hull had lifted and crested the cold slate swells then crashed breaking down out of the roll then lifted again until no man on board had not been sick at least the once and the dining hall had thinned to a man. It was rigged as a barque and bore one mast fore and two aft like a memory of an earlier age but its opulent saloon was all polished brass and riveted leather like the fittings in some modern postwar paddlewheeler off the Mississippi. Every second evening a French magician worked his sleight in top hat and evening dress while a lady accompanied him on the piano. Each night before he slept Foole would take out a small brown envelope and unfold the letter within and reread it in silence with his lips mouthing the words and then he would listen to Molly snoring softly and slip the letter back into the envelope and slide the envelope under his pillow.

  Her handwriting had changed in the ten years since he had seen her last and he thought of who she would be now, fearing from her tone that she had fallen onto hard times herself. She wrote with a gentleness that surprised him given their past and made no mention of wrongs done, of betrayals made. Each morning he gripped the polished railing of his bed and felt the vessel’s sway and thought how much closer he now must be and something stirred in him that he had not felt in a very long time. Among those who lurched into the breakfast saloon were an American senator he recognized from the newspapers and a burly doctor from Edinburgh who laughed loudly among the men but when ladies were present conducted himself with impeccable politeness. He seemed to know something about everything and would speak at luncheons of bare-knuckle boxing and the rightness of the British Empire and of recent oracular surgeries in France and at nights would posit the possibility of spirits and Foole had liked him immensely from the very first. One evening he complained of detective stories dependent on the foolishness of the criminal rather than the intelligence of the detective and Foole had smiled at the simplicity of it but the doctor only chuckled and said, Deduction, my good man, deduction. He was one among them who had gathered late into the night to play whist and while the drinks shifted elliptically to the swells and the men had smoked and laughed, only the doctor had kept his true self hidden. The doctor that is and Foole. For no man he met kept better counsel. Five days out and Foole had grown used to the bite of the salt air and the plummet and lift of the deck and he would take his evening constitutionals leaning into the wind then come in soaked to the skin and clapping his frozen hands and Molly would shake her head at him in disgust.

  None of that mattered now.

  The days had passed. England neared.

  By late morning the liner had docked and lashed its twin gangways fast and Foole watched the trunks and crates of the saloon passengers twist slowly in their nets above the wharf. Any who leaned over the upper-deck railing would see the steerage boiling up out of the guts of the vessel, a roiling crush of families and workers and drifters dragging suitcases or sacks, some gnawing sticks of sausage, others clutching the necks of bottles, a sea of slouching grey caps and brown bonnets and faded shawls lost and then again visible under the low grey drifts of steam, while the great boilers below decks clocked down.

  Foole made his way through the saloon and down the marble staircase to the second level and along the wide gaslit hallway to his and Molly’s second-class cabin. There were porters and passengers milling about and some fixing their hats in the hurry and he twisted the heavy latch of his door but he did not see the child.

  Molly? he called.

  The stateroom was empty, the bedsheets turned back and pressed, the mahogany desk already cleared to a shine. He saw their luggage had been picked up and he cursed himself for having left no tip. He set the five pounds down on the desk then thought better of it and pocketed it again. A crewman knocked at his door and called out the minutes and went on.

  He stood studying his face in the small mirror bolted to the wall. The lines at the corners of his eyes like a fine web of craquelure. The white hair, the dark worried forehead. The already thorny eyebrows. When did he get old. What would she say to see him now.

  What would she say.

  A shudder passed up through the hull. After a moment he set his bowler, sharpened his starched cuffs, took up his cane, and went out on deck. The offloading had already begun its slow shuffle forward. The saloon class had been nearly full with a list of ninety-six passengers registered and Foole pressed through those who were loitering until he had joined the rear of the disembarkation line on the gangway. He did not see any sign of Molly but knew she would be near, somewhere in the crowd.

  He worked his way up until he was standing behind a huge man in a homespun coat, canvas pants, a tattered leather trunk hoisted on one shoulder. He could smell the boiled-sausage reek of the man’s skin, the grey rime of filth at his neck. Everywhere around them were the manicured and tailored figures of men of standing.

  A customs agent in white was inspecting tickets at the first stage on the pier and he stopped the giant and lifted his paperwork in two fingers, turning it in the light.

  You’re in the wrong class, sir, the agent said. How did you get up here?

  Foole heard the giant mutter some word and then the agent lowered the ticket.

  I beg your pardon
?

  The giant was sullen, silent.

  You will exit from down there, sir, the agent said.

  He pointed below at the crowd of third-class passengers, crushed together and hollering against the press of unwashed bodies. Foole’s eyes followed his gloved finger down.

  The giant shrugged one massive meaty shoulder and turned sideways. He might have been a bare-knuckle boxer for all the look of him.

  Excuse me, sir, Foole called ahead. Surely you might let the fellow through? We do have engagements to keep, sir.

  The agent turned. Are you with him?

  The giant gave him a glower.

  Foole held up both hands, the cane hooked over a thumb. He made as if to take a step back and was surprised to find a space had opened at his back.

  I will not be dictated to, the agent was saying. Not by you, sir, and not by the likes of this.

  The likes of what, now? the giant said.

  The agent sniffed and peered past him. Step aside, sir. Next?

  Me papers are in order.

  Next.

  No one moved. All at once the giant slid his big trunk onto the ramp and then in a single coiled gesture he enfolded the front of the customs agent’s waistcoat in his hand and half hoisted the man into the air.

  He was whispering into the man’s ear and Foole could see the alarm in the agent’s eyes as he looked sideways at the giant, looked away. The whitewashed ramp with its slatted stops just beyond the gate, the roiling crowds exiting from steerage. He felt suddenly very tired.

  But he stepped forward all the same. All right now, he said. That’ll do.

  Feeling something sinking inside him as he did so.

  The giant’s shirt was open where the collar did not fit his throat and he held a proofed bottle half concealed under one stained sleeve even as he dangled the agent above the decking. The lips under his black beard were red and wet.

  Put the man down, Foole said. This is not fit behaviour, sir.

  The customs agent spluttered. His pink tongue, whites of his bulging eyes. The brass buttons of his collar glinting in the daylight like coins.

  You, the giant snapped. You shut your mouth. It ain’t your concern.

  Foole nodded unhappily. He could smell the garlic on the man’s breath. He had thought some other might step forward with him but he stood alone. He could see Molly’s red bonnet dipping and weaving behind the crowds massed there as if she were trying to get closer. He felt something like dread pass through him, very hot, then very cold. He altered his grip on his cane.

  Put him down, he said, more firmly.

  Everything went still. The vessel at its moorings, the crowd, the gulls swarming the air of the docks below.

  The giant took a deep breath, he shook his head. With his free hand he leaned across and before Foole could react he shoved him lazily and the force of it was tremendous and sent Foole staggering back with his arms wheeling to keep his balance.

  I said to shut it.

  Foole rubbed at his coat. A sudden flare of anger rose in him and he stepped forward, he pushed at the giant as hard as he could, square in the big man’s back. The giant dropped the customs agent, and turned, he stared at Foole in astonishment.

  An what do you reckon you’re doin? he said in a low voice, all at once uncertain. His eyes flicked over the assembled crowd.

  There are ladies present, sir, Foole said loudly. There are witnesses. Step down, sir.

  A look of confusion slid like a shadow over the giant’s face and then it was gone. Foole took a deep breath, he tightened his grip on his walking stick.

  And then without warning the giant lurched forward and was upon him. Lifting both fists thick as a block of tackle and swinging them overhand as if to stove in Foole’s skull. The man was thick in the waist and leaned his weight in behind him and he moved fast despite his size. But as the fists came down Foole stepped smoothly back and then to the left feeling the whoosh of air in the space where he had stood and then he raised his cane and brought it sharply down on the giant’s temple in two quick strikes and the big man went down.

  There was a cracking sound, like a rivet punching from an iron boiler. Foole watched a dark blister of blood swell just behind the giant’s eye where he lay with his face twisted to one side and then on the decking under his beard a whorl of blood began to seep outward and down through the steel joinings.

  A stunned silence passed over the crowd. Then a whirl of voices, shoving elbows, faces drained of blood.

  Dear god, man, a porter was shouting. Give them air, give them air.

  Foole let himself be jostled aside. After a moment he stepped to the railing with his back to the maelstrom and stood, very silent, very still, as the gulls wheeled and plunged in the air just beyond the ramp. Far below him he could see the yellow waters of the Mersey boiling under the hull.

  On the silver head of his cane a small bead of blood glistened like oil and he saw this and withdrew a starched handkerchief and rubbed it thoughtfully away.

  It was a woman’s letter had brought him back to England. On what business. What else.

  He had eyes the colour of irises in bloom and wore his pale whiskers trimmed and said nothing of consequence to anyone. In an interior pocket of his steamer trunk he kept wrapped in an old woollen scarf an ancient daguerreotype framed and battered and long since clouded into grey. A young woman in crinoline and bonnet seated half obliterated in an open door of a studio, his younger self standing behind her, while the sunshine gleamed off a balcony railing beyond them. The heat of that sun long since burned off, her face long since faded, eaten into whiteness, a slash of shadow where her lips and eyes had once frowned out. It did not matter. He knew that visage in its every line and curve. Her throat, he recalled, had smelled of wild raspberries in summer.

  That daguerreotype was taken in September of 1874 in the bustling harbour city of Port Elizabeth, South Africa. He had been poor then. The photographer’s name was de Hoeck and his studio a dim warren of rooms just north of the public gardens, reeking of fixative and other jars of chemicals standing with lids half unscrewed behind a curtain in a backroom just out of sight. Foole had sat in a corner clutching her shawl in his fists as the man adjusted his lenses and as she sat sorrowful in her beauty and then he had stood and joined her. It had been her last week in Africa. His last week with her. He understood she was living somewhere in London and unhappy in that life. She would be thirty now and no longer as she had been.

  Did it matter? It did not matter.

  Her name was Charlotte Reckitt and he had loved her once and loved her still.

  THREE

  William Pinkerton crossed the narrow lobby of the Grand Metropolitan Hotel without checking in at the front desk for the post. There was a man in a flat-topped bowler reading a broadside under the dwarf palms where the brass railing of the bar met the lobby and he saw the man and how the man looked at him but he did not slow. He felt light-headed, thin in the throat, a shivering in his hands as he went. The gaslights were gleaming in the brass and the mirrors and the marble underfoot and something in all this made him sick. When the gate of the lift folded shut behind him the operator nodded and pulled the lever and the lift creaked under his big weight but the operator did not ask his floor. He could see as they ascended the man near the palms fold his paper, tuck it under one arm, stride out through the lobby doors.

  At his room the door opened at a touch. He felt the hairs on his neck prickle.

  Hello? he called in.

  The air was hushed.

  Show yourself, he called, more sharply.

  After a moment he grimaced and dropped his walking stick and hat on the pier table in the hall and shut the door. He was making himself crazy, he thought. The papers from Sally Porter were rolled tight under one elbow and he understood he had reached the limit of something. He unrolled the papers and opened the shallow cigar drawer and put them away. Stepped back onto the mat and scraped his shoes wearily on the horn, slipped off his chester
field, slung it on the oak coat tree. In the small drawing room to the left he could see the dim shapes of sofas, cane chairs, aproned side tables all crouched and waiting. He ran a hand along the back of his neck.

  Benjamin Porter was gone.

  It did not seem right. He knew the world was not a place of rightness and yet something in his visit to Sally had left him uneasy. He could feel the old melancholy settling in, the slow depressed weariness of an investigation closing. He was this way always after finishing a case, restless and brooding, left wandering room to room in his house in Chicago like a man just risen from a sickbed. Margaret knew not to speak to him at such times, knew to leave him to his loneliness and gloom. But this was different. Since slipping from Sally’s room he had been unable to shake the feeling of a figure just ahead of him, exiting each space as he entered, almost visible. Ain’t no catchin a ghost, Sally had said. Both of them knowing which ghost it was. He had not loved his father in life and he did not love him in death. But grief he knew was a heavier thing than love between the living and the lost.

  The maid had been in. He did not know the hour but thought it still early. The mattress had been turned, sheets and bolster changed. The green curtains in the bedroom were open on their brass rods, their folds waterfalling in elegant swags on either side of the big front windows. He walked the length of the room scraping the curtains on their rings shut. The room darkened window by window until only thin stripes of daylight fell aslant the floor where the curtains failed to meet. But when he turned he could still see the wet heel prints his shoes had left on the carpet. He did not care. He thought of Sally Porter’s decaying room and felt ashamed.

  In the middle of the floor stood an old-fashioned four-poster bed carved from Spanish mahogany and big enough for two. William peeled off his cutaway and withdrew his tie pin and loosened his tie. Then he lay down on top of the bedclothes and closed his eyes. He did not unbutton his waistcoat, did not unloop his starched collar, did not draw the heavy drapery shut around the bed. In the dimness the grey face of his wife stared out at him from her silver frame.