By Gaslight

by Steven Price

  Then came the news from Richmond of the arrest of the Major’s spies and Edward’s life took its last impossible turn.

  He had been a different creature then. The war raging and his several lives already ended and a man whom others feared offering him kindness. Foole sat in the drawing room, thinking this, the big bay windows looking east into the fire of the rising sun. He watched the slow creep of light across the carpet like a luminescence alive and with purpose. Up over the piano, down the potted palm standing in its curve. Setting the twin wooden pails from Antwerp alight, the brass candlesticks from Ghent. He watched this and thought: That is how the past creeps.

  Something had passed between him and the detective that no other had a share in. He thought of the shadows in Rose Utterson’s voice that night as the possession took hold of her and how in that moment he had recoiled like a man burned. Pinkerton had gone back to question her. And now, it seemed, he had come by the Emporium. Foole sat with his fingers interlaced before him, only his eyes moving, sucking at his anger like a sore tooth. Molly had told him about it the evening before, describing the man in his dark moustaches and the strength in his grip. She had rolled up her sleeve, bared the bruises from his fingers. I weren’t afraid of him, she said, too boldly. I reckon he were afraid of me.

  Now the light was crawling over the table’s long curve, over the ladderback chairs. Fludd and Molly sat with heads bowed. They were going through the morning papers seeking word of the painting and the coming auction. The more publicity now, the greater the impact of the theft later, he knew. He stared tiredly at Fludd and Molly where they sat, the big circular table gleaming under the gaselier, watched them slit their uncut pages steadily in the stillness. Folding the penknife and passing it across and unfolding it again. So far only a small article on the third page of the Gazette had mentioned the painting and the auction and Foole had read it with misgiving. The article seemed uninterested, cursory. Everywhere instead was talk of empire and savagery and the wounded honour of the British lion. Last night news had reached London of General Gordon’s death at Khartoum and the morning pages were filled with it.

  Bloody hell. Fludd was running his big hand over his beard in puzzlement. Mr. Adam, he said, where’s this Khartoum at then? It ain’t in Africa is it?

  Molly glanced up from her newspaper. Where’s what?

  Khartoum. The Khartoum.

  Foole lifted one sore shoulder and rubbed at his eyes. You’re meant to be looking for articles on the Emma.

  Molly took the newspaper from Fludd’s grasp and studied it. Oh, the Khartoum. In Mexico. Where that General Gordon got hisself killed.

  Fludd frowned. Mexico?

  You ever been there?

  Fludd shook his head.

  Right, she nodded. Mexico. Whole city’s carved out of the rocks what they live under, like. All built out of tunnels and such. That’s where it gets its name from. Khar-tomb.

  Fludd stabbed a thick finger at the paper. That says there an expeditionary force were sent from Cairo to relieve him. Got there two days too late.

  Molly scanned the article, nodded thoughtfully. Oh they mean Cairo, Mexico, she said. It’s a city near the ocean. It were called that on account of its pyramids.

  Pyramids me arse. Where do it say pyramids?

  They got pyramids in Mexico. Not like in Egypt but they got pyramids.

  Mr. Adam? You hearin this?

  Foole grunted. They have pyramids in Mexico, Japheth. Mexican pyramids. Where they do not have pyramids is in Mr. Farquhar’s gallery. Keep looking.

  Just then Fludd stood, his face reddening, his big shoulders bunching to avoid the gaselier. Mrs. Sykes stood in the door. Aye, that General Gordon, she said. Ask me, any jack what’s foolish enough to just sit and wait while a horde of savages walks right on up to his door and rings the buzzer don’t deserve much else. Imagine.

  Fludd cleared his throat and said, shyly, You don’t consider it were maybe just a wee bit noble? Fightin them savages?

  She snorted. Noble now, is it?

  Fludd’s face fell.

  There’s some as wouldn’t know noble if it climbed up into their lap. As she spoke she stared at the floor and she could not bring herself to give the giant a direct glance. She wrung her hands out in her apron, glanced up at Foole. You wanted to see me, sir? Will you be wantin some tea and biscuit?

  Foole shifted in his chair. Molly said a man came by the house yesterday?

  He did, sir. And mighty pleased with his own self, he was. Manhandling the lass like that. I didn’t care for the look of him.

  What did he want?

  Mrs. Sykes blinked. Why, you, sir. He was to askin after you.

  Molly chewed at her lip. Albie from Gleeson’s come by first, sayin he had a message for you. I reckon he were followed.

  Foole felt something shift inside him, some deep misgiving. What was the message?

  Molly shrugged. Never said. I expect it weren’t nothin. An attempt to get Albie to lead him here.

  Mrs. Sykes was wiping her hands on her spotted apron, the old yellow stains of some mess not quite bleached out there. She cleared her throat. Will there be anything else, sir? Tea and biscuit?

  Biscuit, aye, Fludd said loudly. Be lovely.

  Mrs. Sykes paid him no mind.

  Tea would be fine, yes, Foole said.

  And for Miss Molly? she said.

  Molly grinned at her.

  As she turned to go Mrs. Sykes gave a quick pointed look at Fludd where he stood stiff and formal with his arms at his sides and then she went back out.

  I do adore a nice bit of biscuit, Molly said. She stretched her arms in a theatrical gesture and smiled and rubbed at her belly. O my. Yes.

  Fludd glowered.

  Yes yes O yes, she said. She licked at her lips.

  What was all that about? Foole asked. You two having a fight?

  Fludd grunted and crackled the pages of the paper before him and seemed not to understand. Nothin in the Telegraph bout the painting, he said.

  Foole leaned forward in his chair. We’ll negotiate it back with Mr. Farquhar directly, he said. That should keep the police out of the matter. We’ll sail for New York out of Liverpool immediately. That will mean limited tickets. We may not all be travelling together.

  Just as well, muttered Fludd.

  An then where, Adam?

  I was thinking San Francisco, Foole said with a smile. To begin.

  Just then Mrs. Sykes came at an angle through the door with her strong arms outstretched and the wide silver tray low before her. She set the biscuits down in front of Molly and poured a cup of tea for the child and a second one for Foole and all the while Fludd sat with his big hands before him on the table and said not a word and he watched her every move.

  She did not look at him. Mr. Foole, sir, she said, with a dip of her head. Miss Molly.

  But her bonnet had been straightened, Foole saw, her stray hair tucked up under. She was wearing a fresh white apron that seemed to glow where it traced the bloom of her hips.

  In the first two years of the war the Major ran a network of spies throughout the American South, recording troop numbers, morale, condition of railroads, cost of food staples. He used runaway slaves, deserters, civilians seeking to cross the lines, prisoners of war. For the most precise and delicate tasks he used a cadre of volunteer operatives, sent into the Confederate cities with falsified papers and credible stories. The greatest of these last was the Englishman Timothy Webster, tall, thin, cleanshaven, with long aristocratic fingers and fine leather breeches and a case of cigars for each officer he met. Webster travelled in a private coach under the guise of an English lord touring the battlefields and he soon fell into the confidences of the Confederate elite. He worked Richmond and sent reports back every fortnight. Then in January 1862 word came north that Webster was seriously ill and the reports ceased and in March the Major sent two operatives, John Scully and Pryce Lewis, south to bring the man back. Lewis, a fiery riverboat gambler befo
re the war, had interrogated a Confederate sympathizer in Washington in 1861 and this very sympathizer, a young woman, recognized him on his second afternoon in Richmond. Before nightfall he and Scully found themselves arrested at gunpoint. The Confederate spymaster, a man named Cashmeyer, beat them both senseless and left them in separate cells. Cashmeyer, the Major swore when he heard. The bastard’s a devil.

  Mr. Lewis and Mr. Scully wouldn’t never betray Tim, Ben said. He be all right.

  Edward, standing at the door of the tent, said nothing.

  In the following days the Major, doubtful, paced and swore and barked out letters to his superiors in Washington. He feared Webster feverish and frail would soon be arrested. But Washington refused to negotiate and Mr. Lincoln did not reply directly and the Secretary insisted that the Union did not employ spies and so could not vouch for the release of any such prisoners. Then in the middle of April Timothy Webster was carried out of his hotel on a cot, too weak to walk, and taken to the Richmond prison.

  They mean to hang him, the Major said hoarsely to Edward and Spaar.

  Spaar rapped a knuckle twice on the desk. You mean to exchange him. They don’t hang our people. They don’t hang ours and we don’t hang theirs.

  The Major’s mouth was tight, his lips bloodless.

  And the others, sir? Edward asked. Lewis and Scully?

  They’ll rot in prison. I know what those places are like. They’ll be dead by Christmas from a plague. The Major dropped his cigar into the mud in disgust and walked away.

  Something turned in him, flared, caught the light along its own fineness like a razor.

  Pinkerton did not return to the Emporium. As the days passed Foole’s uneasiness began to fade back into noise and in its place he started to work out the theft with his old obsessive drive. He and Molly and Fludd watched Bond Street and recorded the hours of the night watchman on his rounds. Fludd took down a detailed description of the locks on the doors of the gallery and Molly learned what she could of the night watchman. He was an old sailor with thick wrists and a slight limp and he lived alone across the city. Fludd raised his eyes at that but Foole made a dismissive gesture with his fingers. He wanted no violence and he wanted no witnesses. Every second evening all that week they walked from Half Moon Street to the gallery without hurrying and they timed the distance and wrote down any interruptions or obstacles as they found them. One afternoon they climbed to the rooftop of the bazaar across the street and stood at the stone balustrade with an unrolled copy of the floor plans of the gallery and peered across at its windows and tried to find some way to enter. They knew the doors required two keys for each lock and they knew the galleries themselves were locked after closing. They did not know if the upper windows could be opened. On the sills were iron railings with spikes to discourage the pigeons and the sills themselves were very narrow. It seemed, Foole thought, possible. Fludd returned from a pawnshop in Whitechapel with three shabby old paintings and Foole laid them out in his study on the floor. One by one he cut them carefully from their frames with different-sized blades. They did not go into the gallery again.

  It was on Thursday in the dark hours of the morning that Foole descended to the kitchen and worked the knife sharpener with his foot and held a small narrow jemmy against the stone and shaved it to a fine point. The jemmy was threaded at one end and he unscrewed the end of his walking stick and fit the piece into the hollow there and then re-screwed everything into place. He had brought his black frock coat with him and he laid it open on the carving table and over the inner stitching he ran his fingers until he found the loop of fabric and this he pulled. Two knots of strong cording fell out. He rolled open the heavy oilcloth bundle and its contents clattered softly as he did so and then he stood studying the picks and skeleton keys and tiny blades gleaming there. He removed only three and these he attached at either end to the knots so that they did not rattle and then he closed the oilcloth and tied it fast and lifted up the frock coat and dusted it and set it to hang on a peg of the door. He took down a large bottle of paste from an upper shelf and poured several heavy dollops into an emptied jar and screwed the lid into place. On the floor was a simple wooden doorstop and he stood looking at it a moment and on a whim he bent down and took that also. He took a stick of chalk cool and silky in his fingers and broke it in two. Slipped each half into a separate pocket. Then he stood listening. Rubbing the dust from the pads of his fingers with his handkerchief as he did so as if he could erase all trace of himself.

  They had decided on Saturday night for the theft. It would be Valentine’s Day, the night of Farquhar’s dinner party, and Foole had one last errand still to complete. He needed to get close to Farquhar, he needed a copy of the man’s keys.

  Saturday, he thought.

  All was silent. He cradled the candle, he went back up.

  When he found the Major chewing at an unlit cigar on the river landing at dusk he was astonished to see his cheeks wet and when Allan Pinkerton only shook his head and handed him the newspaper article he too feared he might weep. Timothy Webster had been hanged on a grassy field outside Richmond. The crowds had gathered by the thousands and stood crookedly on the beds of waggons and propped telescopes on the open doors of carriages as Webster walked the steps of the scaffold. He died well by all accounts and when the noose had been fastened to his neck he had been heard to say, Make it tight. None of that had mattered. The drop had been sharp and the rope slipped and Webster had landed in a crumpled heap under the scaffold wheezing in pain. They had dragged him back onto the platform, the crowd hollering all the while. When they drew the noose again tight he had cried out in protest but then the drop fell open and his neck snapped like a chicken bone and he kicked and shat himself and swung slowly and was still. All this Edward saw in his mind’s eye and he put his hand on the Major’s sleeve and felt something like compassion. The Major did not shake him off.

  That was the twenty-eighth of April, 1862. The Army of the Potomac had been ferried south and established its perimeter on the banks of the James in the days preceding and was preparing its slow advance on Richmond. It was the very day Edward first heard about the Major’s son. Standing at the troughs with Spaar, his balloonist’s cap tucked up under one arm, the slow pines swaying on a rise beyond the river. The Major’s eldest was to come down for the siege of Richmond, like an underclassman on his holiday.

  It’s not like that, Spaar said. Major’s more proud of that boy than anything. Do him a world of good, having him down here.

  What’s he like?

  Willie? Spaar grinned. Like chewing a mouthful of nails, I’d guess. A bit like you, kid.

  Edward kicked his way back down to the river but did not see the Major and that night he lay awake with his hands cradling his head and he stared through the tent flap at the stars. The spies Lewis and Scully were suffering in a prison somewhere in the rat’s nest of Richmond. He thought of the stockade at Camp Barry, its blood-soaked straw where he had stared down his own execution. The Major’s grief over Timothy Webster’s hanging had been genuine, shocking. And then he could not help himself and he tried to imagine what the boy Willie must be like. An underclassman with a straw boater and silk waistcoat and soft clean fingers. Dazzling teeth. A rose in his lapel.

  Edward’s tent was downwind of the latrines, the stink and flies were savage. He raised his eyes, arguing something with himself. The stars in their gauzy silver spirals, the snoring and coughing of men all around. This was the filth of his world. In the morning he rose early and went down to the river and dipped his hair and washed out his mouth. Then he trudged back up past the sentries and at the Major’s tent he went in unannounced and when the Major lifted his tired eyes from the map of Richmond laid out before him Edward crushed his hat in his hands and said, angrily: I’ll go. I’ll break Lewis and Scully out.

  The Major regarded him. You won’t, he said. If the greycoats catch you there’ll be no trial, lad. They’ll string you up like a horse thief, leave you to rot on the
rope.

  Yessir.

  The Major grunted, screwed up one sleep-bruised eye.

  Good lad, he said.

  THIRTY

  William sucked at his cheeks and bit into the angry flesh and crossed Piccadilly at a jog. He found Shore lurking under the arch at Hyde Park Corner with the buttons of his coat loose and his silk hat tipped back on his head and he took the man roughly by the elbow and pulled him aside.

  You told me Edward Shade died in the war, he said.

  Shore looked up at him startled. William, he said.

  He didn’t. He’s here. In London.

  Shore shook him off. Glowered and brushed at his sleeves. What is it with you Pinkertons? he muttered. You’re all mad.

  The cold park was busy, a bright sun flaring against the old Iron Duke with his finger upraised on his frozen charger. In the beyond a dark blue sky stretched deep and clear and roofless in the cold.

  He calls himself Adam Foole, William said. But it’s Shade.

  There were ladies rustling past in fur collars and with opened parasols turning on their stalks, as if it were spring already and not just some reprieve from the greyness, there were gentlemen with small white dogs on leashes, breath pluming out before them.

  Adam Foole, Shore said. I know that name. How do I know that name?

  I asked you about him.

  Shore grunted. Aye. You were looking into that bastard Cooper.

  The chief inspector was studying William as he would a feral creature trapped in a coal scuttle. He looked disbelieving and then indignant and underneath it William could see a third thing, a kind of pity. He nodded towards the gate and started to walk.

  Tell me, he said.

  So William told. It was not his habit to bring men into his confidence and he spoke haltingly, cautiously, even now. Everywhere were the crowds. Men in heavy coats walking horses, ladies in top hats riding sidesaddle. Nannies with prams jouncing and creaking. William recounted the gradual drift of his activities, the encounter in the tunnel, his expedition through the sewers and into Shadwell. Shore knew something already of his meeting with Reckitt in Millbank but he recounted it in greater detail. He told of the seance and the man Foole’s horror when the spirit called to him by name. He told of Sally Porter’s letter. As he talked they passed ragged figures curled against the trees, feet tucked up under, and hot-cider sellers and carts steaming with beef pies and potatoes roasting in their skins. Shore listened. The grass in Hyde Park was dead, scruffed at the bases of the wooden posts.