The White Forest

by Adam McOmber

“What response should I give the boy waiting in the courtyard?” she asked.

  I cleared my throat. “I don’t know,” I said, honestly. Day was a charlatan and a false prophet. He couldn’t possibly understand anything about me that I myself did not already know. Yet I couldn’t deny there was a hope buried deep in my consciousness that said I should go to him. That he might actually hold some sort of key.

  “Tell the boy to go back to where he came from,” I said finally. “I need time to think.”

  She nodded curtly. “As you wish.” She turned to leave and then looked back at me. “Jane, are you involved in something your father should know about?”

  “There’s no need for questions, Anne. I can take care of myself.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I suppose you can at that.”

  After she’d closed the door, I went to my dressing room window, which overlooked the courtyard. I waited for a moment as Miss Anne spoke to the messenger, and I felt a chill as the boy stalked off down the stone drive. He was tall and threatening-looking, no more than eighteen, with a hard thin mouth and dark circles under his eyes. His black hair stuck up in whorls and spikes, making him look like something that had been dredged from the bottom of the Thames. This was surely one of Ariston Day’s Fetches, for he wore the required red coat, a mockery of the Queen’s Guard. Just before he passed behind the hedge at the end of the drive, he turned to look back at Stoke Morrow and caught me spying on him. His shining black eyes were so cruel, and before I could close the curtain, I saw the flash of an awful grin on his face. It was a grin that said he knew I’d come around. Sooner or later, I’d fall in line.

  • • •

  On my walk across the Heath to my interview at Ashe High House, I felt a new instability in my world. Nathan was gone, Maddy was overcome, and now a veritable monster was sending his minion to knock at the door of my home. I was exposed and too weak for any of it. I thought again about the final night Maddy and I had spent with Nathan. I remembered the grief I’d suffered, running through the woods, finally falling in the field of shale where Mother had perished. It was a place of death, and there was a part of me that wanted to die. I wept there, pounding my hand on the rock and finally putting my mouth against the fissures in the earth that had poisoned my mother. That night I’d whispered prayers into those fissures—prayers to the dead.

  I attempted to put these memories out of my head and prepare myself for the interview. Vidocq’s questions would require my utmost attention, not because I wanted to answer truthfully but because I needed to decide which details to reveal and which to obfuscate, as Maddy had instructed. My goal was to keep Nathan’s reputation as clean as possible, even though he himself had endeavored to put a number of stains on it since his return from the war. Being at Ashe High House would also put me in close proximity to Nathan’s belongings, and if I remained focused, I might be able to find time to make another experiment.

  Nathan’s family home rose dramatically on Parliament Hill. It was not a decrepit Gothic manor like Stoke Morrow or so many other of the shambling wrecks at the edge of the Heath. Nor was it Italianate cottagery, like Maddy’s own whimsical La Dometa. Instead, Ashe High House was a full-fledged Tudor mansion, lofty and majestic. The Tudor had no fewer than sixty-seven rooms, including drawing rooms, bedchambers, a chapel, a china room, a servants’ waiting hall, two dining rooms (one for summer and one for winter), three libraries, and even a postal office for Lord Ashe’s mailings. There was a tree-lined inner courtyard accessible through the house’s sunroom. The courtyard included a lake big enough for two rowboats to give each other chase. Being at the mansion generally made me feel I was in a small and bustling city, though with Nathan gone, the city had grown solemn. And on the day of my interview, it felt nearly abandoned.

  I was escorted to the upper parlor by one of Vidocq’s dark-suited assistants. Lady Ashe had a predilection for Egyptian decor, precipitated by Napoleon’s conquering of the Africas, known in London as “Egyptomania.” An onyx bust of the jackal-headed god Anubis glowered from one corner of the room—and the god’s association with guiding lost souls to the underworld disturbed me. After Nathan’s disappearance, I did not want to think too deeply of souls that were “lost.”

  The curtains were drawn, and Vidocq himself sat at a desk in near darkness, smoking a finely rolled black cigarette. I was unaccustomed to the acridity of his tobacco, so my first impressions of the detective were through a veil of tears. His image wavered and pulsed as he studied me with colorless eyes. His high collar seemed to support his head by bracing his neck, and he kept his large, square hands above the desk, glancing at my own hands from time to time. I’d read that Vidocq spent his younger years as a petty thief (an occupation that later helped him understand the minds of the criminals he sought), and I wondered if this checking of hands was a remnant of a thief’s paranoia.

  To the left of the desk stood a bronze ashtray with a carved hunting dog poised at the center of the bowl. When Vidocq balanced his cigarette on the tray, the dog seemed on point, and the cigarette, a felled pheasant.

  “I have been told you have some knowledge of my history, Mademoiselle Silverlake,” Vidocq said, tapping ash into the tray. His voice was terribly deep, though his accent still made it mellifluous.

  “How could one not?” I replied, glad my nerves were somewhat intact. “I’ve read the stories by the American writer. ‘The Purloined Letter,’ ‘The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,’ and, of course, his ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue.’ They are based on your exploits, I gather.”

  “Ridiculous embellishment,” he said. “If there was any truth to them, it was altered by Mr. Poe’s opiates. My actual cases tend to be mundane—misguided and angry young men doing harm to one another. No ghouls and certainly no orangutans.”

  “Reality,” I said, attempting humor.

  “Nathan Ashe wasn’t much a proponent of reality, was he, Miss Silverlake?”

  “How do you mean?” I asked, trying for an innocent tone.

  “He was experimenting in the unreal before he disappeared, with the help of one Ariston Day.”

  “I know very little about Nathan’s private affairs, especially those which coincide with Mr. Day’s.”

  Vidocq raised his cigarette again, and I could tell from the look in his eyes that he didn’t entirely believe me. “I met Mr. Poe a few years ago when he was traveling in France. Did you know that, Miss Silverlake?”

  “I did not.”

  “At the time, I was still head of Napoleon’s police, and we met in my office on the Rue de Terre. I’d heard from a literary friend that Poe wanted to find out if I was anything like the detective he invented—Auguste Dupin. He’d only read about me, you know.”

  “And were you like Dupin?” I asked.

  Vidocq attempted a smile, though his thin lips weren’t good at making one. “I suppose not. Nor was Edgar Allan much like the writer I’d envisioned. He was quiet, well spoken, a bit hollow around the eyes. The meeting was little more than small talk. I expected him to produce a raven or a bloodred mask at any moment, but Mr. Poe was simply an educated man, interested in hearing about the new cases I was pursuing.”

  “As models for stories?” I asked.

  “He was beyond mysteries then, I believe. He was working on his novel about seafaring. Near the end of our conversation, he spoke of some scientific principles he’d been contemplating—a cosmology I could not much understand, other than that he thought that the universe went through cycles of expansion and contraction, and that we are currently in an age of contraction. All matter wishes to be unified as it was before creation divided it.”

  “Creation undone?” I asked, feeling my skin prickle. Such topics were a favorite of Nathan’s and, so I’d heard, of Ariston Day’s.

  “Quite so. Speaking of this was the only moment where I believed I was in the presence of Edgar Allan Poe, but I did nothing to make him feel he was in the presence of Vidocq. My point here is that the actual body, the physical
form, is not anywhere as interesting as the mind. There is no real in the human mind, is there, Miss Silverlake? There are only a variety of shifting phantasms. In order to rediscover the physical Nathan Ashe, I must come to understand something of his phantoms. Do you take my meaning?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “So what do you know of his phantoms, Miss Silverlake?”

  I was taken off guard, and when I couldn’t answer promptly, Vidocq offered a semblance of a laugh. “Mr. Poe had one thing right in his stories of Dupin. Deduction plays out exactly as it sounds—it’s a system of subtraction. We remove this and remove that until all that is left is the truth or as close to the truth as we can come.”

  “I can assure you I know very little.”

  “And that’s why I’m merely working to remove you.”

  I felt relieved at this and attempted a bit of flattery. “Lord Ashe assures us that if anyone can find Nathan, it’s you, Inspector.”

  The tip of his cigarette crackled as he inhaled. “Lord Ashe puts a great deal of stock in an old man,” he said. “Perhaps he would do better to name you as his detective, Miss Silverlake. I think men might answer your questions and forget guile entirely.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  “One could simply ask: Did you abduct or aid in the abduction of Nathan Ashe?”

  I glanced at the onyx statue of Anubis, studying his long jackal’s muzzle and the staff he held at an angle against his chest. I wondered if the god used his staff to herd the dead, like sheep.

  “Would you mind answering that question, Mademoiselle?”

  “I would never want to see Nathan harmed. I care for him as I care for my own father.”

  Vidocq nodded. “And where were you on the evening in question—the evening of Nathan Ashe’s disappearance?” The question was difficult to answer. How could I tell him that I’d spent the evening praying for everything to end, praying for all of it to be taken away. I’d lost myself that night, torn to pieces, and the stars came shining through.

  I willed myself not to show any hint of this to Vidocq. I’d known, after all, that the inspector was going to ask about Nathan’s final evening, and I’d prepared my answer carefully. “I spent a good part of the day in the company of Nathan and Madeline,” I said. “The three of us were in the garden at Stoke Morrow, talking as we often did. Then a conflict arose.”

  “A conflict?” asked Vidocq.

  “Maddy didn’t like the idea of Nathan going to the Temple that night, and they argued. She said it was dangerous, but he wouldn’t listen to reason. After we parted, I went for a long walk on Hampstead Heath to ease my nerves.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t Madeline Lee accompany you?”

  “She was—distraught.”

  “So no one can account for your whereabouts that evening?”

  I studied the flowers at my wrist. “Our maid at Stoke Morrow,” I said. “When I returned from my walk it was late, and I was exhausted. She served me a soothing tea in our Clock Parlor. I fell asleep on the sofa, and she came to wake me near eleven o’clock.”

  “Very good,” Vidocq said, making a note on the sheaf of paper in front of him. “Lady Ashe tells me that Nathan came home and ate a light supper before taking his regular carriage to Southwark. This must have been after he left you and Madeline Lee in the garden.”

  I paused. “I suppose that’s correct.”

  “You did not see Nathan Ashe again after he left you?”

  “I did not,” I said.

  “And before his disappearance, was Mr. Ashe courting you, Miss Silverlake?”

  I hesitated, surprised at how the inspector drove ahead. “No.”

  “Then he was courting Miss Lee—daughter of the, how should I say, less than tasteful daguerreotypist?”

  “We are friends,” I said, “all of us together.”

  Vidocq cleared his throat, resting his cigarette in the bronze ash tray. “In France, it is not the custom for people of your age and of opposite sex to carry on as friends.”

  “Yes, well, it was irregular. We are irregular.”

  “What form does this irregularity take?” Vidocq asked.

  I remembered to breathe, focusing on the feverfew to silence the tremor of objects in the parlor. “We spend time together and talk to one another about a great variety of things that men and women should not talk about according to convention. We are utterly open.”

  Vidocq nodded. Over the course of our conversation, a certain haziness had developed in his eyes, making me wonder if there was something other than tobacco in his cigarette. His sleepy look revealed his age and that he was perhaps no match for this case. “Open is an interesting word,” he said. “Do you know, Miss Silverlake, that Nathan Ashe referred to you as ‘the Doorway’?”

  For a moment, I couldn’t believe he’d spoken that name. Of course I knew Nathan called me the Doorway. He and I had many talks about my talent and what he believed the result of the talent might be if pushed, but how was it possible that Inspector Vidocq knew this as well? “He had pet names for all of us,” I said, “as part of his playful nature.”

  “Calling someone a doorway is a curious endearment,” Vidocq observed. “Any idea where he thought you might lead?”

  “No,” I said, lying and hearing Nathan’s voice in my head: the Empyrean, Jane. That’s what the old mystics called it. “Inspector, could you tell me where you heard about the name Nathan called me?” I asked.

  He glanced up with faint interest. “Your friend and confidante Madeline Lee. Is there a problem?”

  “It only made my heart heavy to hear Nathan’s words,” I said, trying not to show my shock at hearing of Maddy’s revelation.

  “Yes, well, you were both a great deal closer to the boy than any of his family, I gather,” Vidocq said. “Especially after the war. His mother tells me he would go weeks without speaking to her. She only saw him from a distance. But he continued to speak to you and Miss Lee in confidence. Could you tell me about Mr. Ashe’s comportment since his return from the Crimea?”

  “He was changed by his experience in the war,” I said, “as one would expect. Men are changed by war, are they not?”

  Vidocq raised his brow but did not answer. Cigarette smoke churned in the air above his head. The room’s shadows painted his sunken cheeks. “I was in a battle, Miss Silverlake—the First Coalition. A skirmish between France and Austria. You’ve probably never heard of it.”

  “I have not.”

  “No matter. I was a deserter and nearly arrested for it. One of my many crimes. I was nothing but a child then. Everyone around me was a child. I thought—why not leave this field of bloodied children? Why not walk away?”

  I had no idea how to reply. Vidocq’s haziness was causing him to reveal too much.

  “Can you tell me anything about this theater in Southwark, Miss Silverlake?” he continued. “The Theater of Provocation beneath the Temple of the Lamb.”

  “Nathan did not share details of that place with me,” I answered truthfully. “You’ll have to ask Pascal Paget. He was involved with the Temple for a time.”

  “Monsieur Paget is reticent,” he said. “It seems he’s been cowed by the theater’s proprietor.”

  “Ariston Day.”

  “Quite.”

  “Have you gathered any information on Mr. Day?” I asked.

  Vidocq put out his cigarette, dropping the butt into the small pile of ash in the tray. “This and that,” he said. “Nothing a young woman need bother herself with.” He surveyed me. “Day is a dangerous man, Miss Silverlake. He has brought a great deal of harm to his followers in the past. I trust you’ll steer clear of him.”

  “Of course,” I said, thinking again of the letter I’d received that morning. “You might want to visit the Temple yourself. It’s across Blackfriars Bridge in Southwark.”

  “I know where it is,” Vidocq mumbled as he made more notes.
r />   “We never imagined this would happen, Inspector,” I said. “Of all the things we thought the future might—”

  But I was cut off. A French agent in a charcoal suit and neckerchief appeared at the door and requested to speak to Vidocq immediately. The inspector stood, without excusing himself, and strode from the room, lighting another black cigarette on the way and leaving me alone. Perhaps it was his age or his altered state that caused him to leave his papers in such disarray on the desk. I leaned over, took the sheaf where he’d been making notes and read:

  —Jane Silverlake, friend to Nathan Ashe and Madeline Lee

  —Known to Nathan as the Doorway

  —Inconsequential, perhaps—not as pretty or exotic-looking as the Lee girl

  —Appears calm, serene. Something beneath surface. Guilt? Anger?

  —No: it’s superiority. Isn’t even looking at me. She’s somewhere else, far away.

  —Unlike anyone I’ve ever met. Certainly not as plain as she first appeared.

  —Jane is hiding something

  —Continually strokes the odd flowers at her wrist

  —Difficult to look in her eyes . . . her quiet voice seems treacherous somehow.

  My face burned as I read this. How dare he write such things? I hadn’t acted in a superior manner. I’d answered all his questions in turn. Treacherous, indeed. Emboldened by my anger, I looked toward the door to ensure that neither the inspector nor any of his henchmen had reappeared, and then I sifted through the pile of papers on the desk until I found a sheaf marked “Ariston Day.” I slipped the papers into my dress pocket, took a final look at the statue of Anubis, and made my way out of the room without bothering to wait for Vidocq to dismiss me. It did not occur to me until much later that I’d perhaps behaved exactly as the inspector intended.

  CHAPTER 7

  In my haste to leave Ashe High House, I forgot to look for another of Nathan’s possessions. This missed opportunity troubled me, but even more troubling was the fact that Maddy had revealed my secret name to the inspector. To know that Vidocq was so close to understanding my true relationship with Nathan made me uneasy to say the least. I wondered what motive Maddy had for revealing such information. Was it possible my dearest friend did not trust me as much as she claimed?