“The holding cell is in this building, is it not?” Ben inquired.
Abbott had not been informed of the arrest, and was shocked.
“It happened while you were watching Evans’s house,” said Anne. “I shall explain later.” Nigel was being well treated, she added, and told Clarence and Ben to go home.
“Edward would never have said those things if he were not sick. Nigel was only following his lead.”
“When will you let him out, Sir John?”
“Is he sharing the cell with those grave-robbers?” Abbott asked.
“Abbott,” said the magistrate sharply, his voice silencing the growing din. “Get me a sedan chair.”
The two persisted to the last, repeatedly asking where and why Nigel was being held.
“You may visit him another day,” said Sir John finally, before taking his leave.
Chapter 18
A constable came thundering down the stairs.
“Mr. Barton!” he cried. “Order Turner to open his door, if you please.”
“What is the matter?”
“I heard a sound inside the room, but when I tried to go in, the door wouldn’t open.”
“You locked the door yourselves. And kept the key!”
“The keyhole’d been stuffed shut so as we couldn’t see through or put the key in. We did poke out whatever it was and get the door unlocked, but something heavy’s also been shoved in the way to stop it opening. By what I can see through the keyhole, I’d say it’s a bed.”
Barton hurried, bow-legged, upstairs.
The other constable was rapping on the door, shouting “Open up!” Barton pushed him aside and pressed his eye to the keyhole. The field of view was limited. The room had two beds that were usually side by side, but the one that should have been closest to the door—Nigel’s—could not be seen. Presumably this was because it had been moved right against the door.
“Edward, it’s me,” Barton said. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” came his voice.
“Open the door.”
“Impossible. I cannot move it again. I am quite exhausted.”
“Why did you move it in the first place?”
“I did not like them coming and going as they pleased.”
“You’re in confinement!” exploded the officer. “We will determine who comes and who goes, and when!”
“When I recover my strength, I shall remove it,” said Edward, panting slightly. “Do not be concerned, Professor.”
“He is temperamental,” Barton told the constables. “Being under surveillance in his own room must be very unpleasant for him. Please let him be.”
“But we heard a noise.”
“I tripped trying to push the bed,” called Edward. “Something fell from a shelf.”
“Your wound did not open again?”
“All is well.”
“Rest,” ordered Barton. “Your injury will never heal if you keep pushing furniture around.”
“All right. I would be able to rest if the Runners could just be quiet.”
“There, you see?” Barton said to them. “If you keep quiet, he will too.”
“But he made a noise first.”
“Acting like prison guards is working against you.” He lowered his voice. “Edward is stubborn, and a trifle perverse. The more force you apply, the more he will resist. In any case, he lacks the strength to move the bed again now. We must wait until he recovers.”
They heard some thumping on the other side of the door, before it opened inwards a little.
“I have moved it,” called Edward.
Peering through the crack into the room, Barton saw that the corner of the bed closest to the doorknob had been dragged back a foot or so. Edward had collapsed onto the mattress, shoulders heaving from the exertion.
The guards pressed their faces into the gap, then nodded at each other and, pulling the door shut, locked it again.
“Edward, you are to rest quietly,” called Barton.
“Your pupils are an unruly lot,” said one of the guards. “Like children—even when they’re villains.”
Barton groaned and went downstairs. Sleep looked improbable. He decided to enlist the assistance of laudanum, sprinkling a few drops into a glass of claret which he drained in one gulp and placed back on the table. Fearing that it might become a habit if the drug were kept in his bedroom, he stored it in his private dissection room instead.
To think that Edward should have killed Evans… And for his teacher’s sake! Evans’s death would erase Robert’s debts, eliminate the threat looming over the school itself. This was behind Edward’s act—with Nigel aiding and abetting him.
Barton doubted that Nigel’s punishment would be severe. Edward’s, on the other hand…
He let out another groan. Charlie raised his head warily, then wagged his tail.
It suddenly occurred to Barton that he knew almost nothing of who Nigel really was. He had never concerned himself with the matter.
It had been Edward who had made the introduction, the year before last. Saying that they had become friendly after a chance encounter, he had shown the Professor one of Nigel’s drawing-books. Barton had been astonished by the work it contained.
“His father was a painter. He cannot remember a time when he did not know how to use a paintbrush, and he learnt to draw under his father’s strict tuition. You were looking for an artist for your dissections. Nigel has nowhere to stay—could he not use my room?”
Barton had agreed at once. The boy’s identity and family circumstances interested him not a whit. His artistic talents, whether granted by God or the Devil, were all that was needed.
Fortunately, Nigel had proved a good boy.
Chapter 19
It was dark behind the magistrate’s eyelids. They were travelling by lantern, he assumed.
“Abbott.” Anne’s voice came through the wall of his sedan chair. “I just remembered that there was something I had been meaning to talk to you about. I think you tip the children too freely.”
“Ah,” said Abbott. “If you mean earlier today, that was…”
“I gave the boy a tip and bought him an eel pie. That should have been more than sufficient. If you give one child too much, the others soon hear of it. Before long they will all raise their prices.”
“My apologies.”
“What did you say to the boy as you were tipping him, by the way?”
Sir John listened for Abbott’s reply. It was some time coming.
“I said ‘Thank you,’” he told her at last.
“Take care in future.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
As they entered the back streets behind Charing Cross, Sir John’s eyelids grew lighter inside.
“There is a light in every window on the street,” reported Anne.
“These are the most profitable hours for a nefarious business,” said Sir John.
The sedan chair stopped.
The magistrate had paid close attention to Albert Wood’s footsteps and attitude over the course of the journey, hoping to determine whether he had come here before—perhaps in pursuit of Evans—or whether the route was entirely new to him. By the time they arrived at the Tom Queen, these suspicions had more or less been abandoned. Wood was not the dissimulator Turner was.
“The pub alone is dark and silent as a graveyard, since we closed it down for the night,” said Anne. “However, there is a light in a third-floor window.”
“Stop that!” they heard someone cry.
Sir John recognized the voice at once.
“It’s Marshal Hitchin. Seen outside the establishment,” reported Anne. “Abbott held a lantern close to his face. Hitchin hid behind his hands, but not quickly enough.”
“Sir John!” The voi
ce was stretched tight.
“Mr. Hitchin,” said the magistrate. “I did not expect to find you here. Do I infer correctly that the libellous part of that pamphlet placed you at the Rose rather than the Tom Queen?”
“Absolutely not. Are you a regular patron of this establishment, m’lord?” he countered ineffectually.
The marshal must have been forced to switch from the Rose to the Tom Queen after his exposure in the pamphlet made it too risky to continue visiting the former. News of the murder committed here had clearly not travelled far yet.
“As for myself, I simply happened to be passing by,” said Hitchin. “Good night to you.”
“Should we stop him?” asked Anne.
“No. Let him go.”
Hitchin’s relief was palpable.
“Mr. Hitchin,” Sir John called out sternly. “I have a number of questions for you. Please visit my office tomorrow morning.” It would be necessary to determine whether his presence was simple coincidence or if he was somehow involved with the incident.
“Yes, m’lord. Good night, m’lord,” he said, hurrying away.
“Now, have them open their door to us,” said Sir John to his companions.
Abbott hammered on the front door with his fist.
“The window on the third floor has opened.”
“Stop pounding, damn you!” came a voice from overhead. “We are closed. Find another pub.”
“Open the door.”
“On your way, or I shall call the Bow Street Runners!”
“The Bow Street Runners,” said Sir John, “are already here.”
“Yet more fuss?” asked the voice from upstairs. “We have closed for the night, just as you ordered.” He did indeed sound like a man who might once have been a non-commissioned officer.
“There is something we must investigate.”
“Have you not investigated enough already? We have done nothing wrong here—to punish us with closure is excessive.”
“The magistrate wishes to inspect the scene himself,” Anne told him.
Moments later, the door was swung open by an apologetic owner.
“Take us to the room where the man was found dead.”
“But it is on the second floor.”
“Sir John, the stairs here are unsafe,” Anne said. “As I mentioned earlier, instead of a banister there is a rope. Grip it firmly with your right hand. Abbott will support you from the left. The rope is held in place by nails whose heads protrude a little, so be careful of those too.”
The publican led the way, holding a candle high. Next came Sir John and Abbott, with the latter’s arm around his waist. Anne followed behind, issuing the occasional warning when her uncle’s hand came near a nail. Al brought up the rear.
“Rather slippery, this rope,” observed Sir John.
“It has been held by so many hands that it is quite black. Be careful, Uncle John. Lift your feet higher.”
Proceeding step by step, they finally reached the top of the perilous stairway, to everyone’s relief.
“This floor is where the cock-fights are held,” said Anne, taking Sir John’s right arm. “There is a round cock-pit in the centre.”
With Abbott holding his left arm as well, Sir John felt as if he were being taken into custody.
“The cock-pit is sunk into the floor, so take care where you step,” continued Anne. “Abbott, walk a little more to the left. I fear I might slip in.”
When Abbott and Anne stopped, Sir John stopped with them.
“The door to the room in question is just as we left it after Abbott kicked it down,” said Anne. “Let us go inside.”
Having no further use for the publican, they shooed him downstairs.
“In the middle of the room is the table. Here is the sofa. On the opposite wall is the alcove containing the bed.”
Sir John felt the fabric hung around the bed, satisfying himself that it was the same as the cord he had already examined. “Tie the cord that the killer used to the chair,” he said. “Arrange everything as it was when you first saw it.”
Sir John was running his hands over the chair, which was pushed against the window with the fabric hanging down the side of the building, when he heard Al doing something.
“Anne, what is Mr. Wood up to?” he asked.
“Reacting with surprise to your question,” reported Anne, “but first leaning out of the window, looking down and then to the left.”
“Mr. Wood, why to the left? What do you hope to see?”
Al hesitated for a moment. “If things were the other way around,” he said finally, “the knot at the end of the rope would make sense.”
“What do you mean?”
“I do not suppose, sir, that you ever climbed a tree as a child?”
“I may have climbed a few.”
“One method is to throw a rope over a high branch, then cling to it as you scramble up. If the rope is weighted at the end, it drops over the branch more surely. The knot in the fabric could serve as that weight. The window of the room to the left of this one has a narrow balcony with low metal bars.”
Sir John understood Al’s point by now, but urged him to continue.
“This means that if someone were trying to escape from this window to the next, the cord would be a useful device. If it were thrown, knot-first, with enough skill, the knot would get tangled in the metal bars, and the cord could then be used to traverse the wall to the next window. It is too dark to make out very much, but to judge from the length of the fabric, even hung vertically it would end seven or eight yards from the ground. The leap would not be impossible, but a slight misjudgement could easily lead to injury. Far better to climb across to the adjacent window, holding on to the rope and finding footholds in the rough brickwork. But that was not the direction of movement, was it? And the bars on this room’s window are broken, so the rope could not have been thrown here from the other one. My apologies—I have wasted your time with pointless speculation.”
Calculating the correct location from the source of Al’s voice, Sir John patted him on the shoulder with appreciation. “Let us visit the next room,” he said. “Anne, lend me your arm. Abbott, untie the cord from the chair, but do not unravel the knotted end. You will stay here; Al, bring the cord and come with us.”
“Sir John, you called me ‘Al,’” he said happily. “I am much more accustomed to that than ‘Mr. Wood.’”
“Then from now on that is what I shall say.”
“I have no objection to ‘Skinny,’ either.”
The next room, as Anne explained, was almost identical to the first, except that the bed and sofa were on opposite sides. The bed skirt, she noted again, was torn.
“Lead me to the window,” Sir John said.
Anne supported him on one side, Al on the other. Al had clearly been pleased by the use of his name. Would the other pupils open up to Sir John, too, if he used their Christian names?
The magistrate’s body brushed against the window frame.
“Not too far, please,” said Anne, stopping him from leaning out.
“Abbott, wait by the window!” he called. Then, in a quieter voice: “Al, do you have a good throwing arm?”
“As good as the next fellow’s, if no better.”
“Abbott, catch this! Al, throw it!”
Anne said it had successfully arrived.
“Tie it to the chair,” Sir John called. “Al, to what should we tie this end?”
“What about the bars on the window?”
“Good. Pull it tight and tie it well. Abbott! Can you use it to cross to this window?”
“That should not be difficult.”
“Shall I do it?” asked Al. “I could cross to the next room and return.”
“No, I prefer not to ask an ordinary citizen to put himself in s
uch danger. Abbott is well trained. He will be all right.”
Abbott managed without incident.
“Untie the cord from the bars,” said Sir John. “Well, Anne?”
“Yes—it is now dangling from the other window, just as it was yesterday. In other words,” she said, growing excited, “Robert Barton did not act alone. He entered that room as we watched, but then escaped to this one, with the help of an accomplice in here. He then bided his time in this room until he saw us enter the other, and slipped out through the door.”
“So it was Dr. Barton!” said Al. “Edward had nothing to do with it. He was simply addled with fever.”
“He claimed to have arrived before Evans and hidden behind the sofa,” said Sir John. “However, he did not know about the grapes Evans ate.”
“Proof that he was not the murderer.”
“Al, do you know of any women with whom he enjoys close relations?”
“Edward never lacks for female attention, but he has no one in particular… as far as I know. Of course, I was not aware that Edward and Nigel had befriended the boy Nathan either, so perhaps it simply escaped my notice. He is something of a libertine, apparently.”
“Gambling, women, that sort of thing?”
“It seems that he spends many nights out on the town with Nigel. Neither of them speak of it directly, but it is apparent in what they say if one listens carefully.”
“Does Professor Barton approve of this?”
“They seem to have kept it secret from him, and I have not told him either. I dislike telltales. I only told you, Sir John, since you asked about it—I did not mean to disparage them.”
“If you learn anything about a woman close to Mr. Turner, I hope you will tell me about that too.”
Al was silent.
“What is that, Mr. Wood?” said Anne. She explained to Sir John: “He picked up a piece of paper that was by the window. Opened it, glanced at it, then put it in his pocket. Show it to us, please.”
“It is only a scrap of paper,” said Al. “However, as you wish…”
“Three inches in width, two inches in height,” said Anne. “Torn. With some letters and numbers on it.”
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