By Gaslight

by Steven Price

  Forgive me, sir, Mrs. Sykes said. But you shouldn’t be down here. It ain’t right.

  And you shouldn’t be working this late. He waved a tired hand, stepped forward and removed his hat and sat down at the table across from her. Neither of us cares about what’s proper. You must know that. Did you enjoy the paintings?

  I don’t mean proper, sir. I mean it ain’t right.

  He gave her a long searching look. Something shifted in her, and she put down the silver and the polishing rag and regarded him. Are you all right, sir? she asked.

  It’s nothing. I’m tired.

  She screwed the lid back onto the bromide. Might you eat a wee bite, sir?

  The way she asked it made him think of Mrs. Shade a lifetime ago and he sat with his head sunk into his chest and his palm flat on the table and then he nodded. Did you know, Mrs. Sykes, that I was caught in the American war?

  Aye, sir. Mr. Fludd might have said so.

  Foole paused, studied her. Did he tell you the circumstances?

  Ah, no sir. He said it was no business of his to tell. Only that the two of you met in the war. She gave him a look. Should he not have said?

  Probably not, he said, but he smiled to soften it. I wasn’t even fifteen. I enlisted for the pay. Imagine. I had no idea what it would be like, the killing. He looked up at her. I shouldn’t be here by rights.

  Go far enough back in any life, sir, an the same’s true of all of us.

  I guess so.

  She smiled.

  There was a major I served under. A good man. Tough, stubborn. But he knew what he knew and there was no telling him different. He was a cooper in Scotland in his youth and he ran from the English all the way to America. He wasn’t so big but he had thick cooper’s arms and when he shook your hand it felt like a vise. He taught me the one lesson I’ve never forgotten: revenge, justice, they’re just two sides of the one coin. Whichever side you stare at doesn’t matter. When you spend it, it’s worth the same. I loved that man. I loved him like a father. Foole raised his face. He tried to have me killed.

  Mrs. Sykes put down the rag on the table and stared. He done what?

  He sent a man to kill me.

  She gave him a long appraising look. It don’t do to dwell too much on what’s gone, Mr. Foole, she sighed. It ain’t easy, I know it. I tell Hettie the past is writ. But tomorrow ain’t never existed before. Not in the whole history of the world.

  As she spoke he watched her eyes shift towards the door behind him and he wondered at it. He heard a heavy footfall in the hall above and knew it and he listened to Fludd pause and pace and pause and then go noisily back up the stairs and he was surprised to hear the giant still awake. He wondered if his friend was wanting him for something. But then he saw Mrs. Sykes blush and dip her head to hide it and all at once he understood why she was awake at that hour.

  He flushed suddenly. Forgive me, he said to her. I’m keeping you.

  Nonsense, she said.

  I am, he said. Tomorrow will come early enough.

  All right, she said.

  I’ll be going up now.

  All right.

  He took the candle and went up. He saw no sign of Fludd as he returned to his room nor as he shut the door nor blew out the candle. He stood a long time in the darkness watching the grey ribbon of smoke from the candle fade. Somewhere above him a door opened and shut and then a heavy tread descended the stairs and passed his room and descended again and then the house was silent.

  Fludd and Mrs. Sykes? He took off his coat and trousers and necktie and went to his window, he stared out at the gaslit street. It felt unexpected, what was in him, like an immense and secret happiness.

  Could the world be other than it was? He passed a hand over his eyes. Just so.

  The world could be other than it was.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  H is unkillable father. Knifed fourteen times, shot four, badly beaten twice, struck once in the throat with such force that he was hospitalized for a week. He had suffered a stroke in 1871 that should have crippled him for the rest of his days but had through force of will dragged his dead leg behind him on daily walks and slowly regained a semblance of speech. In his late years he would change his shirt in his afternoon office while William sat in an armchair and went over the morning’s meetings, watching the old man undress. There was the ugly body, the ropy sinews and slack skin under the arms, the flattened breasts shuddering as he bent at the waist, the folds of flesh bunching there. But the eyes were hard, small, dark, and the set of his mouth was impatient with intelligence. As he had aged he had lost his physical sensitivity and by the end he did not shake a hand but gripped it, he did not close a door but slammed it. All was strength and the exhibition of strength as if he could defeat his own decline through stubbornness alone.

  On William’s first night back from Santa Fe he sat in his pyjamas at the foot of his own bed, his white feet planted on the carpet, while Margaret brushed and brushed her hair at the mirror. He was thinking about his father’s unkillable nature. An attempt had been made on his father’s life in Windsor, Canada, over fifteen years ago. That was in 1868, the year of the Reno business. His father had gone north in pursuit of the last of that gang and a salesman walking behind him on the ramp as he disembarked from the ferry withdrew a revolver from his samples case and held it to the back of his father’s head and pulled the trigger.

  He did what? Margaret lowered her hairbrush, studied him in the mirror with shining eyes. You never told me about this.

  I didn’t want you to worry.

  Was the gun not loaded?

  William grunted, shifted his bulk. The bedsprings shivered, creaking. It should have killed him, he said. I guess Pa felt the man there at the last minute and turned around and somehow got his thumb jammed in the hammer of the revolver. Broke his thumb doing it.

  Your father, Margaret said.

  William studied her straight back, her white neck, her long hair drawn down over one shoulder. He nodded. He knocked the fellow down. The man later told the police he’d been hired by us for the publicity, that it was all a stunt. That night he escaped or they let him go. Our operatives caught up to him of course, we took him down to the docks and questioned him ourselves. Turned out he’d been hired by Sam Felker.

  Sam Felker?

  William nodded vaguely. Some four-flushing penny detective trying to make a go of his own business in Detroit at the time. I guess he’d been thinking to get Pa out of the way. He laid his head back on the pillow. He was remembering the gleam in his father’s eyes, the triumph as he studied the assassin’s swollen face in the half-light of that grimy room. The sound of the man’s bones cracking. Freighters bellowing and men hollering on the docks outside the warehouse, the three operatives motionless in shadow, their fists double-wrapped like pugilists.

  What happened to Felker?

  William raised his head. Margaret was still watching him in the mirror. Felker? Nothing. I think he went broke a few years later.

  She doused the lamp and slipped into the bed beside him. I never imagined I was marrying into a family of lunatics.

  He smiled into her hair in the darkness. Ma’s not crazy.

  Your mother’s the worst of the lot. But she said it gently with a smile in her voice and then she slid a soft leg over his thighs and straddled him. She held a finger to his lips. We have to be quiet, she whispered. The girls will hear.

  A low cloud lay over the city. He had worn his oilskin and was walking fast his shoulders hunched and walking stick raised but the rain held off. In the streets he slipped between carts and waggons, squelched through the mud, shouldered past beggars and clerks and shoppers all massed on the footways and seemingly pushing against him. His stomach was tight. As he went he thought how easy it would be to lose Shade. His visit to Rose Utterson might have already tipped his hand and the man could be preparing his departure even now, could be already gone. Edward Shade had not eluded his father for twenty years by being careless. In
the crooked lane some of the peeling red and black posters had been ripped down by the rain during the night and lay crushed in the muck of the setts. William kicked aside a broken milk tin, its bottom blown out, and watched it rattle sharply off a bollard. He saw no one. After the roar of the streets the lane felt eerie, still, a place out of time. The stained brick walls, the mist drifting through, the quiet dripping of water into the gutters. At the small gunsmithing shop with Gleeson’s in gold script on the windows he paused, glanced behind him, scraped his shoes, and then went in.

  A man looked up as he entered. He had blooming whiskers badly kept and a leather apron tied off over a green frock coat and in his hand he gripped a small sharp hammer. The shop was dim, dusty, cold.

  William walked straight for him, his eyes level. You’re Gleeson?

  Hadley Gleeson, sir. At your service. Wiping his hand in his apron, holding it out. And what are you in need of today, sir?

  Where’s the boy?

  The gunsmith cocked an ear as if he had misheard. Albert don’t get in till ten o’clock, sir, he said slowly. If it’s about a piece, I’d say I know the trade a fair bit better than the boy do.

  I’ll wait.

  It’s not about that Showalter girl now, is it?

  William paused.

  He swears it weren’t him. Now I’m inclined to believe a girl in distress but Albert, well, he may be rough but he ain’t so rough as that.

  William gave him a look. It’s not about the girl, he said.

  Although there was an alleyside loading bay into the cellar there was no back entrance. William took in the shop, smaller, shabbier in the daylight, and drifted to one corner, the gunsmith watching him the while. When the boy came in William had been lurking to one side of the door and he waited until the door had shut and then he stepped forward. Gleeson called to the boy at the same moment.

  Albert, he said, this gentleman here has some business with you. Make it quick now. I’ve a week’s worth of work for you and half a day to get it done.

  Albert had already turned in alarm, his greasy pinched face squinching down. His hair was thinning and long over the ears and William found it difficult to imagine the boy getting any girl in trouble. He put a big hand on Albert’s sleeve and drew him, struggling, to one side of the door.

  You remember me? he said softly.

  Albert glared fearful from under his eyebrows. The gunsmith Gleeson was watching from behind his counter, a hunting rifle in one hand, a small gun key in the other.

  I have a message for Mr. Foole. William withdrew from the lining of his oilskin a five-pound note and he crushed it into Albert’s palm.

  A quick sly nervous glance across the shop. I’ll see he gets it, I will.

  William nodded. You tell Mr. Foole there has been a development in the Blackfriars Bridge matter. Tell him Charlotte might not have gone for a swim after all.

  He squinted up, as if looking for some advantage. Charlotte?

  Just tell him. William turned to go. And Albert?

  The boy studied him, sullen, pale. Aye?

  You stay away from that girl.

  All morning he waited, drifting from shop to shop, smoking in the shuttered doorways. It did not rain. A man is nothing without patience, his father used to say. Patience and a loaded gun. When Albert went out at noon William followed as far as the Fisherman’s Hook pub two streets over and he watched through the streaked windows as the boy ate alone and sucked the sauce from his fingers. At two o’clock the gunsmith Gleeson went out with a heavy satchel clanking over one shoulder and shortly after that the boy took down the sign and closed up shop and proceeded at a brisk pace in the direction of Piccadilly. William slid like a shadow along the wall, following.

  Albert turned from the tumult of Piccadilly into Half Moon Street and trudged up the steps of a tall terraced house there and he buzzed the tradesmen’s bell and then turned and slid around the side of the house. It was number 82. A low wrought iron railing with a swing gate propped open ran alongside the pavement, and the steps, William noticed, were a cut white stone which the gunsmith’s apprentice had sullied with his boots. William stood in his oilskin under a gaslight across the street and watched the side yard where the boy had disappeared. He could see no movement and at last he risked cutting across to the far side and walking slowly past the house. He caught a glimpse of the gunsmith’s apprentice talking to a young boy. He walked on twenty paces then took off his coat and folded it over his arm and cut back to the far side of the street and retraced his steps.

  It was then he saw Albert, walking quickly back in the direction of Waterloo Place.

  William took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair there in the street and stared after the apprentice and then he turned and peered up at the house. It must be Foole’s, surely. But he did not go up. He took careful note of the address and set his hat on his head and slipped his arms through his oilskin. Just then the front door opened and the boy emerged.

  You, boy, he called roughly. He jogged across the street, caught the boy at the gate. But when the child turned he saw in surprise it was a girl, ten, maybe eleven years old. She stared up at him with a snub nose, freckled, her red lips downturned in a pout. Her dark eyes were hard, too knowing. He instinctively lowered his voice. Do you work here? Who’s your master?

  The girl scowled. My what?

  He was in no temper. He thought of Foole coming down the street and he grabbed the girl by the upper arm, he pulled her onto the footway. Who lives here?

  She glared sullenly up at him. An what’s that to you? Let go my arm.

  I’m looking for an acquaintance, lives near here. A man named Foole.

  An acquaintance, is it. Do tell.

  He stared off in the direction the apprentice had gone. What did you and the gunsmith’s boy talk about? he asked, all at once uncertain. He was starting to think he had made a mistake.

  The girl blinked.

  Albert. The apprentice.

  She glanced angrily away.

  And then William understood. He had the wrong house. For god’s sake, he muttered. Your name isn’t Showalter by chance?

  Just then there came a sharp cry from the house and he turned and saw a stout housekeeper shaking out a rag, glaring down at him from the step. What’s this then? Fondlin the wee ones when you don’t reckon anyone like to catch ye, is it?

  William gave her a startled look, loosened his grip on the girl.

  She slid nimbly out of his reach. Bloody damned American bastard, she swore.

  And then she was gone at a run down into the bustle and crowds of Piccadilly and lost to view. He turned, one hand on the cold gate, his eyes fixed on the housekeeper. You, he said.

  Me nothin. I’ve a mind to call for the constable.

  I’m looking for someone, William called up. He opened the creaking gate. Wait.

  I don’t give a black rat what you be lookin for. Off with ye now.

  Wait. A Mr. Foole? Adam Foole.

  Go on. Get. She stumped back into the house, slammed the door.

  William climbed the steps and paused listening and then he knocked sharply. She did not answer. He lifted his eyes and glimpsed two gentlemen, canes looped over their wrists, standing on the footway watching. He grimaced. He would need to return to the gunsmith’s apprentice and find a more direct line of questioning, he knew. He started to go, then paused, his eye catching on something to one side of the door: a small brass plaque, screwed into the railing. Foole’s Rare Goods Emporium. Imports & Exports. By Appointment Only.

  Son of a bitch, he muttered.

  There had been another side to his father. All was not brimstone and fire, or not only. He was also a man whose greatest pleasure lay in making something from nothing, in the building of spaces, architectures, lives. He had stumbled back out of frailty and retirement when the fires swept through Chicago fourteen years earlier, devastating the old Agency offices. William had watched him pick his way through the charred rubble, leaning heavily o
n his arm, already describing the massive building he would erect in its place. And for ten years the old man had designed and planted larches on his sprawling ranch property in Illinois, the farmhouse and pavilions filling with art and books and murals of General McClellan from the war. William stood in the shadowed foyer of what would soon be his mother’s house in Chicago, listening to the old clock punch through its minutes, feeling the living presence of his parents on the floor above. His mother would be snoring, his father down the hall in the morning room half awake and in pain. William put on his hat, sighed. The summer lane was abloom with darkness beyond, fragrant, and dense, and heavy.

  He stood listening like that, remembering. Knowing his father would soon be gone from the earth, that he would not again hear that voice, see that face. Let him stay like this, he thought, though the man suffered and faded daily. He closed his eyes. Let him stay like this, Lord, he whispered. Let him suffer just a little while longer.

  TWENTY-NINE

  In those first long months after the war Edward would remember his time at Fort Monroe with the Union army and how his own happiness had eaten away at him. How he had stared at his face in the small shaving glass tied to a post in the tent by one of the older conscripts, seeking out some resemblance to the Major. The cut of a tooth. Flare of a nostril. If he saw in Allan Pinkerton the slope of his own shoulder he could be excused perhaps on account of his past. All this he would think of in years to come with a kind of heartbreak and bellicosity. He took to standing the way the Major stood with his arms crossed and wrists tucked under and his chin sucked down to his chest and he would screw his eyes into slits and bite down on a stick as if it were a cigar. He too would argue or sullenly disdain the Washington cabal. He too admired General McClellan in his stern elegance. He too regarded the ragged Negro runners emerging from the wilderness with the pity and compassion of a man who had for twenty years fought for their freedoms. All this and the almost undetectable burr that would come into his voice as he grew agitated as if he too had put a childhood in the Gorbals behind him. He was not yet what he was, what he might be.