By Gaslight

by Steven Price

  As they approached, a long thin figure detached itself and drifted towards them.

  Look what’s crept out of its lair, Shore muttered. And then, louder: It seems you have beaten us to the quarry, sir.

  There was a tightness around Breck’s grey eyes and he glanced at Blackwell in distaste before saying, sourly, I have warned you, Mr. Shore, if you do not instruct your constables not to interfere with a crime scene I shall be of no use to you.

  Shore rubbed his gloves together. Aye, so you have. Mr. Blackwell, please see if anyone is still here. The night watchman, perhaps.

  No use at all, Breck repeated. I mean that. I have other matters to attend to at the hospital, they are no less pressing.

  Dr. Breck, William interrupted. What have you found?

  Other than that the London constabulary force is made up in equal measure of cattle and of feed?

  William smiled. Other than that, yes.

  Breck turned his back and kneeled at the edge of the street running his fingers through the mud in its grooves and he said, You, at least, Mr. Pinkerton, will appreciate what I have found. He stood and turned twice on the spot and stared with pouched eyes at the ground and William saw the knees of his trousers were black with muck. The doctor turned and held up a vial of reddish liquid. Do you know what this contains?

  Blackwell had just emerged from the gallery and was approaching through the fog as Breck spoke and he said, Does it contain the solution, sir?

  Breck gave him a sharp mistrustful look. The solution?

  To the problem, sir.

  Ah. Breck scowled. Amusing.

  Blackwell smiled politely and rubbed at his cold nose and said, Mr. Shore, sir. The night watchman is still inside. Seems he heard nothing. Noticed nothing amiss until this morning when Mr. Farquhar arrived having found the letter. It was then they went upstairs to the gallery and discovered the theft together. He says he has no idea when it happened, or how.

  That is because he was asleep, Breck said.

  You’ll want to talk to him, William said to Shore.

  Breck glanced coolly across. You’ll be assisting in this investigation, Mr. Pinkerton?

  Never mind him, Shore said. What did you find?

  Breck ran a filthy hand along his neck. Ah. The man you are looking for is slight of build. He is small, but athletic. He did not come in a cab or in a carriage. He climbed to the gallery alone using the outside of the building but he had an accomplice waiting here below. He is well-dressed, a gentleman, and he was recently in America. He has been in the gallery several times over the past few weeks and is a professional criminal recently in trouble with the law. Not here, but overseas. Most likely in the United States.

  William listened to all this feeling the gears clicking in his mind and he paused and he studied the thin doctor and then he said, quietly, How can you know all that?

  You see what you expect to see, the doctor said impassively. I expect nothing. He gestured at the street. The only recent wheel grooves standing at the curb are from a single wide-gauge wheel, which suggests a private carriage. Hansoms are narrow gauge. As it last rained early Saturday evening but only lightly, and as there is only the one impress in the mud, it is reasonable to assume this carriage belongs to Mr. Farquhar, whom I know arrived at the gallery this morning. Therefore the thief arrived here on foot. There is a smudge of white chalk on the underside of the window ledge which I am certain will also be found on the upper side. This will be from the thief’s fingers. It is smudged because he has tried to conceal his fingerprints. This means his fingerprints are likely to give him away, and that he knows this, which in turn suggests he is both familiar with the technique of fingerprinting, and fearful that his prints will be recognized. This is a recent technique, only coming into use in the last few years, and only so far in Argentina, France, and the United States. Therefore he has been handled by the authorities in one of these countries at some point recently. He will have been well-dressed so as to draw little attention to himself as he walked through this area late at night, and either he or his acquaintance must have been recently in America as he was smoking this cheroot, which is an American brand, and somewhat expensive.

  Breck was gesturing with the toe of his scuffed shoe to the ground-down heel of a small cigarillo.

  None of that would stand as evidence, William said.

  It does not matter. It is correct.

  Justice isn’t a matter of correctness, Doctor.

  No?

  It’s a matter of proof.

  Breck gave him a strange dark smile. Justice, he said softly, as if tasting the word.

  The gas in the sconces was standing at a high flame, casting a corona of light up the walls. A man’s footfalls echoed through the galleries ahead then faded and as they went upstairs Shore said, It’s the same damn thing with that scarecrow always.

  Breck?

  Blackwell.

  William pulled off his wet gloves. I didn’t know he was a problem.

  Shore barked a laugh. Not a problem. Seems his theory on that girl’s head we fished from the Thames might pay out after all. A publican, missing wife. He’s done his digging. Fine detective work. I told you all this last week.

  Yes. The Charlotte Reckitt case.

  Shore shrugged. We’re calling it the Thames case now.

  You have doubts too?

  Not doubts. An open mind. Shore put a hand on William’s arm, slowed. I have a favour to ask. Mr. Blackwell means to confront the man, this publican, tomorrow.

  And you don’t think he can handle it.

  Whoever did this to that woman is not a fellow to take lightly. I’d hate to have a second head in the river.

  William thought of the severed head in its jar and the savage wounds on the torso and he nodded. Okay.

  Shore studied William as if reconsidering his request and then he grunted and turned away. This painting, he said, this Emma. It seems some industrialist in America has had an eye on it. The papers have been claiming he’s one of two probable high-bidders, against some French aristocrat. You don’t suppose one of them is involved?

  It’s more likely Farquhar himself.

  You’re not serious.

  William looked at the chief inspector’s appalled face and smiled. No, he said. I guess not. But I do know this. When the press gets wind of this it’s sure to increase the notoriety of that painting. And the more famous, the more valuable. Farquhar sells paintings for more than you’ll see in a lifetime. He knows how the market works. You’ll want to talk to him.

  Shore led him into a high-ceilinged gallery with plaster mouldings running the span and naked wood boards which rattled loosely as they walked. Flat on the floor lay an empty gold frame, a thin ragged strip of canvas along its perimeter. The velvet rope on its stand had been upended and one end was stiff with some sort of paste. On the wall a picture wire dangled naked and forlorn where the portrait had hung. The lone window stood closed but unlocked and when William crossed to it he could just make out soot smudges on the inner sill.

  Is Breck finished in here?

  Aye. Shore bit down hard on the stem of his pipe but did not trouble to light it.

  William walked in a wide approach to the picture frame and crouched down beside it. Tell me about this night watchman, he said. He lowered his face until his eyes were level with the back of the frame.

  Name’s Owen Archer, Shore said. A retired soldier, served in India for years. Swears he heard nothing, saw nothing. Blackwell’s inclined to believe him.

  A job like this usually has a man on the inside.

  You think I should bring him in?

  Probably. William furrowed his brow. The painting was cut carefully from its frame. Whoever did this knew what they were doing. And they didn’t want to damage the painting. That means either they mean to sell it, which is unlikely, or to keep it for themselves, which would require a queer sort of passion, or else—

  Or else what?

  Or else they obviously mean t
o honour the terms of the letter. To return it undamaged.

  Shore grunted. Looks pretty damaged to me.

  The thief came in and out through the window, as Breck suspects, William said. That means he’s agile, and strong. But also small. He would have needed someone to stand lookout below but this would be a small job, a professional job. You’ll be looking for a slight man, a professional criminal, who is clever enough to have avoided being implicated. Most likely he has a heavy-set and tall accomplice who could help him scale the wall. The letter was deposited Saturday evening or on Sunday, most likely the former. Which means either this thief or one of his accomplices was present at the party. By invitation, one presumes, to arouse no undue suspicion. Breck thinks he’s come over from America. Sound like anyone we know?

  Shore gave him a look. Sounds a little bit like you, he said.

  William smiled a wolfish smile. If I were the thief, I’d want the perfect alibi. And what better than to have been seen at Farquhar’s own residence that night? But there’s something he wasn’t counting on.

  What?

  Fingerprints.

  Breck said he didn’t leave any trace.

  William withdrew the letter from his pocket with great care and held it out by one corner. This is his mistake. Have Dr. Breck dust this.

  Shore stared at him in amazement. Why would he leave his fingerprints on that? If he were so damned careful with the rest?

  The letter was deposited before our little demonstration, John. The theft was executed after. When he left this, he didn’t have to worry about his fingerprints yet.

  Shore stared at him. He shook his head. You and your bloody Edward Shade, he muttered. You think everything comes back to him.

  Everything does, said William.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Foole woke early and lay with his eyes open in the darkness, listening.

  Somewhere above him Charlotte slept. Her warm skin soft under sheets. The knowledge of it burned inside him like a slow-breathing ember and after a while he shifted onto his side, the mattress creaking under his elbow. He drew the blankets tight in a huddle and he stared at the shapes of the furniture.

  He had never imagined her like this. The haunted weariness around her eyes, as if she were squinting at him from some small point very far away. The hair hanging in strangled ropes over her eyes. A slash of light at her throat like a knife. And then her voice. He had stared at her as the night coalesced coldly in her hair and poured into her eyes and then he had looked down and seen her small traveller’s case standing at her feet and felt Mrs. Sykes’s hand on his arm and had stepped aside.

  He remembered Mrs. Sykes bundling her into a blanket, clicking her tongue the while, giving Fludd a strange unreadable look. Come now, love, she was saying, let’s get you in out of that weather. Molly had already dissolved back into the stairwell, only the whites of her eyes visible.

  You were dead, Foole had said. I saw your body.

  Charlotte looked at him, uncertain. She pulled off her gloves, finger by finger, and rested a cold hand against his cheek as if in answer.

  He could feel it still, the pressure of that hand. He ran his fingers lightly over his face as if her touch had left some trace on him. After a moment he rose from the bedsheets, he danced across the freezing floorboards, he dipped his fingers in the basin on his washstand. He rubbed at his face and throat, he splashed his armpits, he shivered. Despite his exhaustion a quiet triumph was building in him, something delicious and impossible and sacrosanct. Somewhere overhead Charlotte lay dreaming, somewhere Charlotte breathed.

  He opened his wardrobe soundlessly. The looking glass on the interior door flared like open water, flared and then darkened. Foole dressed quickly and went out past the landing and down.

  He knew Mrs. Sykes would be awake, already stirring the ashes in the kitchen. But the candles in their sconces had not been lit, the parlour was cold. He passed through into the Emporium and he saw a light underneath a door and these rooms were warmer but when he went in to greet his housekeeper he stopped in the doorway surprised.

  I thought you’d be sleeping, he said.

  Charlotte turned at the fire, her hands held out before her. The deep purple lines under her eyes, the skin at her mouth drawn and grey. I couldn’t sleep, she said. I haven’t been sleeping much.

  He did not know what to say.

  I lit the fire. I hope I did not overstep—

  But she did not finish and her words drifted away and she lowered her face. He shut the door, he approached slowly, as if entering a dream. She wore a pale green dress he had seen on Hettie and the sleeves were short at the wrists. Her skin was ethereal and white and with her black hair loose she looked a visitant from some other world. Watching her he had all at once the uneasy sense that a stranger stood inside her, peering back at him with a sinister and vicious intent. But then her features shifted and he saw the girl he had known and he understood. Inside him lurked just such a stranger also.

  What is it? she said. The glint of her eyes watching his.

  He swallowed. I just thought, well. It’s been so long.

  A faint smile. You got old too, she said.

  He blushed and looked away.

  The fire burned on. They said nothing for a time, unfamiliar, uneasy. Foole stood flexing his hands on the back of the reading chair and after a time Charlotte rose and drifted across to a tall shelf, her pale fingers moving soundlessly over the objects there. The whorled stone of an ammonite. A set of salt-rusted leather journals. A wooden crate filled with coins dug from the earthworks at Nantes.

  I spoke to Gabriel and Rose, he said at last. They think you’re dead. I had Mr. Fludd into half the flash houses in London, making inquiries. No one seemed to know much. Gabriel heard a rumour Pinkerton had birked you. I thought it might be an old grudge. He looked up. I tracked down the Saracen.

  She looked back over the scoop of a shoulder. Cooper?

  I found him at the Lascar’s.

  She took this in, surprised, perhaps, that he had learned of her arrangements with the man.

  There isn’t much of him left, Foole added. He paused. I’m sorry.

  Cooper was dead years ago, she said in a flat voice. He just didn’t know it. She reached up with two hands and smoothed and twisted her dark hair over one shoulder and she said, We had our differences. But I wouldn’t have wished black pudding on him. He’d have cut his own throat if he’d known he’d end up like that.

  But there was no kindness in her tone and Foole noticed the set of her mouth and wondered at how the years had hardened her. The logs cracked in the grate, a soft rapid popping, a shirr of ashes blown upward. Foole felt his hands tighten on the back of the chair. He stared at her and forced the pity he felt into a small hard knot in his heart. He said, Where have you been, Charlotte?

  She looked away, her face reluctant.

  I thought you were dead. You must have known I was here.

  I heard you were looking. Yes.

  You’ve been in London then.

  She nodded.

  And yet you never contacted me. You never sent word.

  She turned, hands clasped before her. Why would I contact you? You’ve been arm in arm with William Pinkerton. I saw your Mr. Fludd with him, outside a coffee house in Haymarket.

  Pinkerton was hunting your killer, he said softly.

  My killer.

  Your killer. Yes.

  She stepped forward and stood beside her chair and said, But William Pinkerton knows I didn’t die.

  Foole studied her, the play of firelight along her arm, her throat.

  He saw me. Last month. He followed me in the street. Why else would I have been in hiding all this time?

  He could think of many reasons but he did not voice them. He told himself her secrets were hers by right and it was not his place to interrogate them and he pinched his eyes shut as if to convince himself. Molly and Japheth will have questions, he said instead.

  And you? You must have que
stions also?

  He shrugged. It isn’t my business.

  It might be.

  Well.

  What is it.

  The detective you mentioned in your letter. In December. That was Pinkerton?

  Yes.

  What did he want? How did he find you?

  She ran an abrupt hand over her throat. I didn’t know who he was. An American detective, in London? He could have followed me for months, I’d not have suspected.

  How did you sight him?

  I thought it was chance. It wasn’t.

  He let you.

  He let me. He tipped his hat and held my eye in the Underground one day. Then he tailed me across half of London and I couldn’t shake him. The next day he came to my door and pressed the buzzer and left. He did that every morning for a week. He knew I was inside, he knew I wouldn’t open the door to him. I thought it over and started to get cross and the next time he came I invited him inside to tea. He declined. That was when he told me his name. He left me his card.

  What did he want?

  Charlotte gave him a long level look as if expecting him to answer his own query. Lowered her eyes. She said, He’d followed me for weeks. At first it was nothing, a nuisance. It complicated my intentions for greasing my uncle from Millbank, true, but nothing more. Then it grew threatening. Watching my house at night. Footprints on the carpets when I came home. Once I was standing at the footway of Potter Street and someone pushed me into the traffic and I was nearly run down. It was him.

  Foole did not think that sounded like William Pinkerton. But then he knew, too, the nature of that man and how mercurial it could be. He said, That was when you sent me the letter.

  That was when I wrote you, yes.

  I got your letter on Christmas Eve.

  She said nothing.