The Devil's Mask

by Christopher Wakling

  Dead ends notwithstanding, I found it progressively easier to waylay and question these strangers. The trick, it seemed to me, was in projecting the right balance of authority cut with respectfulness. Order a man about and you may as well stop his mouth up yourself; simper and he’ll brush you aside. Ask him his advice, however, in a straightforward tone, and he’ll soon spill his innards.

  Yet it wasn’t until I took the obvious step of visiting the bathhouse that I obtained my first lead. After all, the whole point of the city, as with our own Hot Well in Bristol, has to do with the alleged healing powers of its warm springs; up until then, I realised, I’d been asking cream of all the farmyard animals save the cow.

  They’re odd places, bathhouses. Where else does fashion purposely rub shoulders with disease? Imagine choosing to take tea, meet friends, go courting even, in a hospital! Yet that’s more or less how the hot-spring clientele choose to spend their time. I had to pause while a woman clutching two canes wheezed past the doorman. Every time she coughed, her head shook so violently that a halo of powder puffed itself free of her hair. As I waited, two foppish men not long out of school trousers tittered straight past me up the lemon-stone steps. They did not seem to notice the dying woman. Or rather they treated her with a familiarity suggesting that were she lucky enough to live until the evening, they’d no doubt be dining on an adjacent table.

  Waiting proved worthwhile. The master of ceremonies was willing to offer advice once I’d addressed him as such. A new doctor was indeed in the process of setting up in town. He had come from a ship, and would thus face an uphill battle in persuading the gentlefolk of his worthiness to address finer illnesses. John Street was where this man had rented premises, apparently. No doubt he’d be pleased to welcome me; he could not yet have had many other visitors.

  I met Blue in the Six Stars, as planned. The place specialised in a strange, cloudy sort of ale, which the landlady, who no doubt had a share in the brewery, pressed upon us. It had a potato-mould aftertaste, which I fought off with a cold slice of game pie. Bolting this meal did nothing to diminish its impact: I had not realised how hungry I was until I cleared the plate.

  As it was, Blue had also ascertained the whereabouts of Doctor Waring’s premises. It may have been my full stomach, or the fact that the afternoon sun had broken through the clouds, burnishing the stone mullions beside our table, or it may just have been the beer, but I felt compelled in that moment to take Blue into my confidence fully. He should know the true import of our search before continuing it. A cart rocked past our window, the long spokes of its rear wheels scissoring through the warm light. I explained Carthy’s disappearance, the ransom note, Orton’s strange reticence, and my conviction that the Belsize was to blame.

  It struck me, when I’d finished, that in painting Blue’s ship in such an unpleasant light, I was in a way slighting the man.

  ‘Of course. I’m talking about some aspect of its cargo. Something Addison and his ship’s inner circle would have been privy to. I’m not suggesting that you would know …’

  The Negro shifted in his seat, a slow ominous movement that rendered my words ineffectual. I ceased talking. At length he looked up and said, ‘Waring,’ very quietly.

  ‘What of him?’

  ‘He invested.’

  ‘You’ve mentioned as much. And I’ve seen a note of it in the Company’s file.’

  ‘Well, it’s those with a share in the voyage who ultimately care what a ship carries.’

  ‘I hope you’re right.’

  I could tell from the sawing motion of Blue’s shoulders against the fretted wooden splats of the bench-back that he was uncomfortable, that there was something more he wanted to say. I kept quiet. In the right circumstances, Carthy has always maintained, silence has the power of a Spanish Inquisitor: at length Blue gave in to his urge to break it.

  ‘There was a storeroom, constructed for the journey’s last leg. A space between decks. They fashioned it during the refit, after the storm. You see …’ The big man shucked his shoulders again uncomfortably. ‘But none of that is important. Only the Captain himself, and Waring, held sway over the new store. They presided over it. They held the keys.’

  A pressure in the back of my neck squeaked its way through my jaw: the millstone grip of ground teeth. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘What was in it? And …’ I could not hold back the further question. ‘And why have you not told me until now?’

  The bench-back creaked as Blue leaned against it. Partly silhouetted by the window, his face was doubly dark, yet a new, yellowish flash was present in the man’s eyes when he turned them upon me. I realised anew his foreignness, and bolstered myself against it, drawing myself up in my chair.

  ‘Because I don’t know for sure,’ Blue went on. ‘And what little I do know, which I’m telling you now, I forswore to keep secret.’

  ‘The Captain is hardly in a position to enforce orders now,’ I said, and instantly regretted the heat in my voice: the Negro’s eyes narrowed imperceptibly, the yellow fire there dimming to an appraising pity.

  ‘No,’ he said softly. ‘It’s not his censure that concerns me.’

  Forty-eight

  John Street was a narrow, inauspicious thoroughfare, just shy of the centre of town. Either Waring’s investment hadn’t lived up to expectations or he was a cautious man, starting small. It was obvious which house he’d taken for his premises: the windows were still blanked out with wax paper and the wrought iron contraption above the door was as yet unencumbered with a hanging sign. Though the frontage was adorned with the yellowy stone ubiquitous to the city, it needed attention. A series of stains ran from the guttering and windowsills of the upper storey down to the pavement. It looked as if the building had broken out in a sweat.

  The front door stood open. To admit tradesmen, no doubt: if the outside was anything to go by, the Doctor’s treatment rooms would need tarting up, too. Blue rang the bell. He seemed uncharacteristically nervous. When nobody descended to greet us, I leaned into the hall, knocked on the door and called out a hello. There was no answer.

  I called out again, more loudly.

  Still no response.

  I inched over the threshold and drew breath to call out more loudly still, but at that moment a muffled thud upstairs stopped me short. Perhaps the Doctor was unpacking. I was about to mutter something to Blue about the necessity, in a city of such fashion, to equip a doctor’s surgery with gilt mirrors, grandfather clocks and chaises-longues, when the sailor lunged forwards unexpectedly and hammered up the uncarpeted, wooden steps. I followed quickly. The walls of the stairwell, covered in a lilac print paper, flashed by.

  In the time it took me to reach the head of the stairs, Blue was already disappearing into the room at the back of the house. Perhaps he’d heard something in there. I was about to go in after him when I noticed, on the wallpaper directly in front of me, the daub of a handprint. It was like the marks Anne makes when Carthy has her paint with water on the courtyard flagstones. Only this hand was bigger, and the shape wasn’t painted with water, but with blood. There was a smear of it further along the wall, too. It had not yet dried to the dark brown mud colour, but was still the shocking orange of a nosebleed caught in a handkerchief.

  I heard Blue saying, ‘What the?’ in the room at the back of the house even as I approached the door at the other end of the corridor, at the front. It wasn’t shut. I reached for the handle but it, too, was stained red, and I when I saw this, I flinched from touching it. But Blue was immediately back out on the landing, and my inaction felt foolish.

  I shouldered open the door.

  There was a man on his side in the corner of the room. He was lolling against the skirting board, clutching something to his chest, and his progress to that spot, from the doorway in which I stood across the painted floorboards, was spelled out in a ragged trail of red. Evidently he had crawled. Never had I seen so much blood: it didn’t seem possible that one man might spill that amount and still live. Yet this m
an was alive. He was blinking. The thing he was holding was grey and glistening and alive too, and suddenly I understood what it was and felt the bile rise up my throat. I went towards the man. He did not appear to take in the fact of my presence. He was preoccupied clutching at his spilled entrails and trying to breathe through lungs filled with blood. Ginger whiskers, bright as the stain. It was Doctor Waring. He looked at me, and then, with his eyes widening, at Blue. His body shivered uncontrollably. Our arrival there offered him no solace.

  Forty-nine

  I knelt beside the Doctor and pulled him upright against the wall. I wanted to help him, but I didn’t know where to start. The wetness soaked through my breeches immediately: red knees, a red shin. He was the doctor. He would know what to do, but I didn’t. His orange whiskers were slick with blood. He coughed weakly and there was more of it in his throat, leaking down his chin. I wanted to stop up his mouth. And his guts, oily in his hands: I wanted to cram them back inside his trunk. So much blood. His shirt was sodden with it, agape from waist to chin, but … the buttons were still done up. The cloth had been slashed, as had the skin beneath it, and the softness of his belly, his innards hoiked out through the hole. What devil would do such a thing? Each chop and suck of breath was weaker than the last.

  And yet for now, just, he was still alive.

  ‘Who did this to you?’

  The man blinked past me, over my shoulder, and began shaking his head violently. I turned round to see Blue. His face was a mask of shock.

  ‘Help me here,’ I said.

  ‘At the back of the house,’ he said. ‘There’s a window that has been put through. Whoever it was, they got away.’

  ‘Fetch help!’

  The head-shaking had turned to a shuddering which racked the man’s frame. I thought for a moment that it may have been prompted by Blue’s appearance; it almost seemed as if Waring, in this desperate state, still found it within himself to be frightened of the sailor. Indeed, as Blue came towards us the shudder turned to a spasm. Then the Doctor’s grip on himself slackened, and his hands slipped into his lap, and I found myself taking hold of one of them, despite the blood. Though I couldn’t help the man, I might still comfort him.

  Chop and suck. Chop and suck.

  Beside me, Blue, quietly: ‘What’s the point?’

  Chop. And suck.

  I could see the sailor was right. Nevertheless, I gripped the Doctor’s hand, and held his gaze while it softened, the amazement in his expression dissolving. Slowly. He took long minutes to die. Finally, just as I thought it was over, I felt him gathering one last breath, and harbouring it, and shaping it to use with intent. Though his eyes were mere slits, they took on an improbable, all-seeing cast in that instant. He studied my face. I squeezed encouragement into his hand. Then he looked to Blue and let out that final breath in a wet whisper. His words were difficult to catch, and I was powerless to reply.

  ‘You’re kind,’ he said. ‘Forgive me.’

  Fifty

  I knelt before the dead Doctor. I reached inside my coat for a handkerchief and rubbed at my palm, but could not entirely erase the pink smear. Blue hadn’t spoken or moved. I turned around. He looked thoughtful, which was impressively … collected … of him, given that we’d just watched a man die. There was nothing of the consternation he’d exhibited on discovering Addison. Instead, he was scratching the corner of his mouth with a fingernail. The nail was pearl white and square cut. Held up to his face like that, the hand looked monumental. Purple black stubble dusted the grey black of his skin.

  There was a pause.

  Then Waring’s body slid gently sideways and the arm he’d been clutching across his torn midriff fell to the floor. Something metal clattered dully on the boards. My knees peeled sticky outsized thumbprints from the wetness as I rocked back up on to my feet. I skirted the body and bent down again to inspect the metal object, which was still connected to the doctor’s fingers. I had never seen such a tool before. It was like a cross between a pair of scissors and pliers. The blades, cracked open, looked fiendish. My first thought on seeing this ugly contraption was that perhaps the Doctor had done this terrible harm to himself. No. It wasn’t possible. He’d been trying to defend himself, surely, against an attacker armed with another weapon.

  Blue pulled me away from the body and into the room at the rear of the house, through which, he said, the Doctor’s killer must had fled. Sure enough, the sash window had been smashed. The sailor told me again how he’d heard footsteps from the alley: he was sure we’d arrived just as the killer was leaving. Here was some more evidence, he said, kneeling to point out spots of blood at the foot of the wall. As he pushed himself up again, he winced, sucking air over his teeth. He’d cut the base of his own thumb on a splinter of glass at the foot of the wall: shards from the window, it appeared, had tumbled inside as well as on to the outer sill. This was confusing. It meant the window could have been broken either to gain entry or exit. When I said as much, the Negro, wrapping his neckerchief around his sliced palm, pointed to the trail of blood across the swirling Turkish carpet.

  ‘Whoever it was, I reckon Waring nicked him with his shears.’

  ‘This blood could be the Doctor’s, though. The attack may have taken place in this room. Maybe Waring was set upon in here and subsequently staggered to the front room.’

  The Negro shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

  We stood in silence a moment. I tried not to stare at the bloodstain on the floor. The Doctor’s attacker had struck after we arrived in Bath. After or because? I returned my gaze to the sailor.

  ‘What was the Belsize carrying, Blue?’

  He said nothing.

  ‘What secret bound those beyond them to Addison and Waring, that they should both pay for it like this?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But you were going to tell me something. In the pub. What was it? What were you going to say?’

  ‘I’d say there’s every reason to keep quiet. The Captain is dead. So is the Doctor. My tie to the ship is cut. I’ve no reason to get caught up in the likes of this now.’

  ‘But you already are caught up in it,’ I said softly. I looked down at my stained trousers. ‘We’re covered in it. Both of us are.’

  Fifty-one

  Justice Pearce was a gaunt man with a wide smile, better befitting a social visit than a murder investigation.

  ‘The Doctor’s body is upstairs,’ I explained. ‘I don’t know what the boy has told you, but, well … you should prepare yourself. The scene is macabre.’

  ‘Rest easy. This isn’t my first corpse.’ The Justice tugged on his frock coat, rejigging himself. Then he smiled again and said, ‘Inigo, wasn’t it? I’m not sure what your line of work is, young man, but in mine we get our fair share of excitements! I doubt this will top them.’

  The man’s blitheness worked upon me. It seemed manufactured, corrupt. Pearce strode up the stairs. My first inkling that there was a seriousness behind his chipper façade came when I saw him run his hand over the banisters as he ascended. It appeared he was counting them. I led him to view the broken window. Then, with Blue silent at my side all the while, I showed the Justice through to the room at the front of the house, in which Waring’s body lay. Pearce’s eyes took in the corpse swiftly, then skipped off around the blood-soaked room, glib as his footwork, before returning to the poor Doctor again. His spilled entrails were still glistening. They looked like something those children might have dug up, fresh from the Avon mud.

  ‘So,’ the Justice said at length.

  ‘Abominable, isn’t it,’ I replied weakly.

  ‘You came visiting, you say, to find your host in this terrible state.’

  ‘As I explained, he was still alive when we arrived.’

  ‘Yes, yes. The door was ajar. Etcetera.’

  I described again the order of events: Blue had discovered the window; I found the Doctor first.

  ‘I see,’ the Justice said absently. ‘But you journeyed to Bath
together. The visit was a joint one.’

  ‘We split up to discover the whereabouts of the Doctor’s new premises,’ I said. ‘And then, yes, we reconvened and arrived here at the house together.’

  The Justice waved the specifics aside with a lightness apparently designed to persuade us that the exact details were unimportant, but in doing so he conveyed the opposite impression to me: I understood instead that he was testing whether it would serve to drive a wedge between Blue and me.

  ‘What did you do when you found the victim, then?’ Pearce jerked on the lapels of his coat again, making a show of getting back to the point.

  I told him of our futile attempts to comfort the dying man, yet what had seemed so obvious at the time – that he was beyond assisting – now appeared glaringly presumptuous. We hadn’t sought help. My voice sounded thin in my head, reedy with guilt. The Justice was nodding and puffing out his cheeks consolingly, but I suspected, deep down, that if he was drawing any conclusions from what I was saying they were unsympathetic to our cause. He let my explanation eat itself up, then squatted down next to the corpse. He bent low over the wound. It appeared he was surveying a flower bed or cake decoration, not a man’s insides.

  Eventually he bobbed back up. ‘Good!’ he said. ‘So, to sum up, I’m to understand that the two of you came looking for the Doctor. That was your intent. You came together, then split up, then you were together and apart and together again, until finally you found him. And when you did he was alive. Alive but torn down the middle, as he is now. Dying. You watched him die, by which I mean witnessed it, comforting him, helping him face his end.’

  I could feel Blue stiffening in his boots beside me as the Justice trotted out his insinuations. We had raised the alarm, I insisted, yet this seemed irrelevant to Pearce, whose pink-blinking eyes said he’d already made up his mind. He pulled a rumpled polka-dot handkerchief from an inside pocket, retrieved the gruesome scissor-shears from the Doctor’s blackening lake, and calmly wiped the murder weapon down. I found myself explaining – in terms so nebulous I instantly regretted it – the business-nature of our visit. The Justice clipped the blades open and shut a few times, waiting for me to dry up again.