Mr. Timothy

by Louis Bayard

The mere mention of his name draws our eyes back to that figure on the floor—even smaller in death, I think, than he was in life.

  I bow my head. I say:

  —He is on my conscience, Colin. Not yours.

  On my conscience forever, I should add. But that hardly seems necessary. Once again, I kneel by that squat form. From behind me comes the tentative shuffling of Colin’s feet, the soft hiccoughing of his chest.

  —He were a good sort, the captain.

  —Yes. The finest.

  He pauses for a few seconds, then asks:

  —What they done with Filly?

  —I don’t know, Colin.

  —Kilt her, likely.

  With a raw wonder, I unclasp the fingers of my left hand. The rosary beads rest in my palm, like a dowager’s stolen necklace.

  How quick they must have been. She would have reached for these before anything else.

  But if they did kill her, why didn’t they leave her body with Gully’s? Dragging a corpse down to the pier would have served no purpose. If all they wanted was her silence, it would have been easier, surely, to leave her here.

  No, they didn’t kill her.

  —She’s still alive.

  I say it under my breath, but still Colin must hear, for he draws a little closer and, in a small voice, asks:

  —What they want with her, then?

  —I don’t know.

  Rising to my feet, I give Philomela’s beads a final worrying, then shove them into my trouser pocket.

  —We shall find her, Colin. You and I.

  And then kill them.

  But that hardly needs voicing, does it? It’s what she asked us to do, after all: We kill them.

  And you, you overcivilised fool, upbraided her for her presumption. Wasted your time with Scotland Yard and licorice, with Sheldrakes and Squidgies, when all along you should have been following that simple injunction.

  Kill them. Or they kill us.

  How does arriving at such a determination change a man? I don’t feel any different. The room itself hasn’t changed. And yet the air is stiller, and Colin is quite noticeably shrinking from me.

  —You sure you’re all right, Mr. Timothy? Coz from the looks of things, they banged you but good, and you know how a fellow can get when he’s had the senses knocked out of him….

  I motion him towards me. And in the ensuing seconds, every misgiving that Colin has ever entertained seems to roll across his face, and it is probably a tribute to Gully that he does eventually come, that he assumes this attitude of submission, so contrary to his nature.

  —Listen to me, Colin. I need you to do something. Can you do it?

  He nods, briefly.

  —You’re to go to Scotland Yard. Do you understand?

  Another nod.

  —You’re to ask for Inspector Surtees. Not another living soul will do—it is Surtees or nobody. And if he is out of office, then you are to wait for him. As long as it takes. Can you do that?

  —Yes.

  —You’re to tell him everything that’s happened since last I saw you. That’s all you need to say, he is acquainted with the rest.

  —I’ll do it.

  —And tell him from me, Colin. Tell him that Sergeant Rebbeck’s latest artwork is on public view here in Craven Street. Free of charge.

  Colin grimaces, sets to scratching his head.

  —But, Mr. Timothy, he’ll want to talk to you, won’t he?

  —It’s too late for talking. If I have need of him, I’ll let him know.

  —But you can’t just…I mean, there’s inquests, Mr. Timothy, there’s, there’s funerals ’n’ burial expenses….

  —All in good time, Colin.

  Finding no redress with me, he falls back a step and exhorts the ceiling.

  —And then what? I mean, Good day, Inspector, jabber jabber, and then what? You know, it’s…it’s…

  He’s spinning in circles now, and the words spin with him, and as best I can make out, he’s trying to ask me something but can’t. And then it occurs to me that this is in itself a form of asking, and so I speak to him in the gentlest voice I have yet been able to muster.

  —Would you like to stay with me, Colin? For the time being?

  His eyes dart back to the ground. The mask slides back into place.

  —Well, that’s an interestin’ notion, Mr. Timothy, for a free-roamin’ cove such as myself. ’Course, if you was lacking for company and all, you and the captain bein’ mates and all, well, that would be, that would be another think altogether….

  This is as far as he will come to meet me. It is far enough. I say:

  —Meet me back at Mrs. Sharpe’s when you’re finished.

  He shrugs and nods and then, with a flurry of mutually cancelling gestures, bids me farewell and slips through the door frame. He stops for one last backwards glance at Gully and appears to take fresh assurances from it, for he then leaps down the steps two at a time and propels himself through the front door like a cluster of grapeshot. And it is only when I peer out the window and see his tiny figure dash down the street that I realise he has failed to ask for money.

  Likely, he took one look at my disarray and pegged me for temporary impoverishment. But in fact, the coin purse is still there, in the deep recesses of my waistcoat. Kneeling one last time by Gully’s still form, I roll down the lids of his eyes and dot them with copper pennies. Instantly, his face clouds over, assuming the very myopia I remember seeing on Father’s face. I remember thinking it was a form of mercy.

  Speaking loud enough for Gully to hear, I say:

  —We shall meet again, Captain. Very soon, perhaps. And I shall repay my debt to you a hundredfold.

  Unlike Colin, I don’t take a last look. I simply close the door behind me. And as I pass down the steps, I think: They came this way, too, Rebbeck and his minions. With Gully’s blood on their hands.

  But how did they get in? That’s the question that will haunt me to my grave. How did they get in?

  Did they pull some confidence game on poor, credulous Gully? Was that it? Rebbeck wouldn’t have been above using his old police uniform. He might easily have supplied some tale, something with a flash of verisimilitude—poor Tim, perhaps, rotting away in a cell.

  No, getting Gully to open the door would’ve been the easy part, but finding the house—how did they manage that? All of Gully’s precautions, all the care I took in coming here, the circling and doubling back and the sidelong looks and darting trajectories…and still they were waiting for me when I reached Craven Street. Already preparing their strike, I’ve no doubt, and needing only to hold me off to keep the way clear.

  But that part of it is history now, fast receding, and Craven Street is once again a fairground for lawyers. Only two days left till Christmas, and still they are locked in their ant-rounds: buzzing and jostling, humming and chattering, skittering off to Lincoln’s Inn and scuttling back again. There were probably a good two dozen of them trolling for business when Rebbeck came knocking on Gully’s door. Two dozen lawyers beetling past when Gully’s arms were pinned behind him. Two dozen lawyers clutching their sheaves of parchment as Rebbeck, smiling courteously, advanced with his wood-carver’s blade. Two dozen lawyers stopping their ears to a man’s gargled scream, to the thunder of a body falling to earth.

  Oh, Gully.

  My resolve gives way. I sink to the kerb—a squelch of mud. I wrap my head in my hands. And now, at last, that tide of feeling is ready to crest. It roars up my throat, it wrenches open my mouth, it flings itself into the December air, an unwavering line of sound.

  —Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

  No one stops. The only response I elicit is the small gilt-edged piece of cardboard I find resting in my lap when I open my eyes again.

  *

  BRACEBRIDGE YOUNGBLOOD, ESQ. Solicitor

  Reasonable terms. Speedy dispositions.

  *

  Mr. Youngblood has long since swept on, like every other tenant of this street. Every one but m
e, that is, and the miniature waif abandoned a few yards down the way. It is swathed in mud and jammed against the kerb, nearly lost in a pile of orange peels and peanut shells, and only its distinctive corkscrew shape recalls it to me. Philomela’s doll. Mashed and squashed and soaked through, but curiously hardy all the same. It would outlive London, if it could.

  —Mrs. Sharpe said…

  Funny thing about having only one eye available to you: the people who pass across your field look both nearer and impossibly remote. Mary Catherine, for instance. I might be looking at her from the wrong end of a telescope, and yet her face stands as intimately revealed as one of Uncle N’s fungi. I can see the way it crimps and unravels slightly at the sight of my blood-smeared comforter, and I can see her mouth catching at the thread of message on her brain’s bobbin.

  —Mrs. Sharpe said (Lord above, Mr. Timothy!) you were to knock on her door as soon as (shall I fetch you a compress?), as soon as you come. And how she heared all about the goings-on from Iris (oh, that eye!), and it’s a bloody travesty, she says, and a sacrilege, too (are you sure I can’t?), and what’s more…

  I put out my hand.

  —Tell Mrs. Sharpe I won’t be able to see her today.

  But the mistress of the house comes knocking, anyway, about ten minutes later. A tiny rapping on my bedroom door.

  —Mr. Timothy? Are you feeling poorly?

  A low, even voice, much more attractive than its public version. And a part of me, I will say this, would like nothing so much as to open the door. The very largest part of me, it may be, but I dare not trust it. And so I let the words die on my lips, leaving nothing but cold, deep silence.

  —All right, you rest, then. There’s a good boy.

  And with her voice goes my last connection to the living world. I collapse onto the bed, I burrow down into a pudding of wool: Father’s comforter below, the bloody comforter on top, and me somewhere in the middle. The fire grate is empty, but I’m too weak to get up and tend to it, so I just lie there, shivering like Lushing Leo. My hands shake, my teeth rattle…every part of me is atremble. And as the afternoon wears on, the shaking becomes almost comforting, a kind of ostinato line beneath the teeming melodies of my brain. So many motifs. Gully on the floor, hailing his cab. Philomela disappearing into the sewer. The girl in the alley and the girl in the river. The gentleman in the carriage. Discrete images at first, and then, imperceptibly, they merge. Gully’s coin-eyes stare out from the river girl’s face, Miss Binny’s weeds wrap themselves about Philomela’s doll, Sergeant Rebbeck screams as the brand sears his flesh.

  And glowering over everything else, a flapping G, with falcon eyes and lion haunches, dousing us in shadow. I hear the beating of wings…a high, strangled call…and now the shadow parts, and through the vent, a head emerges, and I am running, my hands have curled into talons, but the creature is not fooled, it draws ever closer, I can feel its hot breath on my neck, the tickle of its feathers. It is close enough now to call my name, a mocking stage whisper…

  —Mr. Timothy. Mr. Timothy.

  A soft voice, and yet so insistent that it drags me from my stupor, drops me back in my bed. The dregs of afternoon pour through my bedroom window. The crack in the ceiling smiles its toothless grin, and the shivering in my body has passed to the rest of the room, for even the door is shaking.

  —Mr. Timothy.

  Someone is knocking, very lightly, so as not to wake the dead.

  —Mr. Timothy.

  I’m not sure from where I derive the strength to get up from the bed, to cross to the door and slide the lock. I think I must still be riding the wheels of my dream.

  And behold. It is Colin. Hand raised for one more knock.

  —Jesus Christ, Mr. Timothy!

  Helpless, I fall back before him. With a nurse’s ruthless instinct, he claps a hand across my forehead.

  —You’re all aboil.

  Yes. Yes, I knew that. How silly of me not to mention it.

  —Quiverin’ like Saint Vitus. What say we lay you back down again, eh? There’s a good fellow.

  He wraps me back in my comforter pudding, then sets to laying coals in the grate. Within minutes, a robust fire has sprung up. I turn to it in admiration—greedy for a new sensation. I watch Colin stoke the fire, boil a pan of coffee, smear a film of vapour from the window, and I am conscious, even in the midst of my tremors, of the reversal in our positions. In the normal course of things, surely I ought to be consoling him? That is my bounden duty, is it not? As the elder….

  —Well, it was…it was a shocking business, Colin. You know, if you’d like to…

  What am I offering him, exactly? He’s not buying, whatever it is. His voice is keyed to a domestic hum, and if now and then a quaver tips the balance, it never lasts long enough to betray him outright.

  —It’ll come as no surprise, I’m sure, Mr. Timothy. Colin the Melodious has done the job once again. Don’t you think he went and sallied into Scotland Yard, not taking no guff nor nothink? Don’t you think he told them peelers, “You give me Surtees, or you give me nobody”? And don’t you think they as good as rolled him straight in? Lord, though, that Surtees is an odd sort o’ mackerel. Wouldn’t keep to the subject, always askin’ if I wanted for candy. Talked more of licorice than anythink else. D’you think it were a code, Mr. Timothy?

  Gradually, very gradually, the fire’s heat takes over, and the shivering dies away, leaving behind only crucibles of ache, dull pinpricks scattered across my body. It’s as if the old pain in my leg has borne children, a dozen generations’ worth, sliding down the banisters of my bones, digging their heels into my sinews.

  I raise myself to a seated position. I run my hands through my hair.

  —Well, that’s the spirit, Mr. Timothy. Lookin’ a bit more human, ain’t you? Should I send for a potboy? A little ale’d get the piss movin’ again.

  —That would be lovely. But first…

  —What?

  —Would you be so good as to take down that glass from the wall? I’d like to see myself.

  —You sure about that, Mr. Timothy? Coz you’re not lookin’ your best, you don’t mind my—

  —All the same.

  It turns out to be the face I deserve. I am altogether pleased with it. People spend many months in Marshalsea striving for just this sort of pallor. But the eye is, of course, the primary attraction: a soufflé of deep purple, well nigh perfect except for that seam of sealed eyelid running beneath it. I poke the bruised flesh: it makes barely a murmur.

  —Colin, would you pass me that pin?

  A quick lance is all it takes. The blood pours out in a thin wash, dribbles down my cheek, curves around my jaw. My lids, relieved of their weight, begin to pry themselves apart, and through the widening crevice, my eye starts back to life. A sea of red, in which Colin’s face swims like a flounder.

  —Christ, Mr. Timothy! At least wipe your face, will you?

  The potboy brings two pints, and Colin and I settle by the grate, him on the floor, me in the chair with a blanket wrapped round me. Locked in our parallel griefs, we stare into the fire. No escape but the far corner of the room, and I don’t trust myself to cross even that short distance without escort.

  The air grows cold on our backs; the sun drops out of the window frame; twilight creeps near. And perhaps it is the spell of darkness that unties Colin’s tongue, or perhaps it is simply the coaxing of ale and fire, but before long, he is asking me about Gully. What sort of career he had, where he hailed from, where I first met him. I tell him everything I know, and in telling it I realise how little it is. No family that I can attest to. Only one friend I’ve ever met: an elderly ship’s outfitter down in Radcliffe. How unfit I am to bear his memory into the next generation.

  Colin raises his tankard.

  —To the captain, then.

  —To the captain.

  But it is too soon for elegy. Too soon, with Gully’s body still unburied—stretched out in a police waggon, for all I know, or lying in a mor
gue. Too soon, with that infamous assault still playing out in my mind, more violent with each iteration.

  And so, as night comes, grief turns ineluctably to rage. Rage is the heat that courses beneath the other heats. Those coals in the grate, they will crumble; the fever may well be gone tomorrow; but this heat will rival the sun for longevity. It will burn on until it has been answered, until Gully’s spilled blood has been requited.

  Strange, that my rage should take as its main object not Rebbeck, not the men who abetted him, but the man who sent them. That silent man in the carriage, with his obscene gestures and his obscene jewellery. The man who sends young girls to their deaths, who means to do the same to Philomela, if he hasn’t already. This, this is the man who must be removed from the earthly vale before anything else can be set right.

  And once again, the sensation of having seen him before—of having, somewhere in my possession, the clue that will solve him—is like an electric nettle in my skin. I find myself wanting to reach into my own brain, scrape his image free of every other integument, answer the question that tasks me so cruelly.

  Where? Where have I seen him?

  In my mind, I retrace my steps over the past few weeks, to no purpose. I scan the streets I have walked, the rooms and hallways through which I have passed, the chance encounters on random street corners…and still the face eludes me.

  Here I sit, ready—oh, ready—to avenge, and my quarry dances quicksilver through my fingers. One of your better jokes, God. Oh, yes, an excellent joke you’ve had at my expense. If only…

  What?

  If only you hadn’t made me choose Gully’s flat.

  If only you’d forced me to listen to Philomela.

  Oh, why leave it there? Why not extend the regrets into the realm of fantasy? If only you’d given me one of Peter’s three-legged cameras, had it follow me through the streets like a hunting dog, searing into my cortex every face I encountered, the exact circumstances of each meeting.

  One of Peter’s cameras. One of…

  Wobbling, trembling in every limb, I rise to my feet. The tankard in my hand tips to one side, pours out the rest of its ale in a smooth, even stream.

  —Bloody hell! says Colin, leaping to his feet.