by James Reese
The table. Six feet round and hewn of solid mahogany. Its top was slick with blood, blood which dripped onto a carpet showing a blue design through the ruddier shades of stain. Nearer now, I could discern bits of viscera in the blood, and the wood of the tabletop had been nicked by knives. These observations I made aloud to Caine, but my poor Watson had all he could do to keep hold of consciousness, though it was he who then asked, “What the devil?” while pointing to a black bag that sat beneath the table.
What the devil? indeed.
“Thornley,” I said, squatting to better see the bag.
Through the kerchief clasped to his mouth—against the blood only, for I doubted he caught that heady perfume of possession—Caine queried, “Your brother, Thornley?…What are you saying, Bram?”
“Thornley has just such a bag. It is—if I am not mistaken—a doctor’s kit, a sort of travelling surgery.”
I nudged the bag into the light with the tip of my boot. I then bent, prised wide its opening, and proceeded to draw from it knives of every type.13 The knives—from cleavers to the finer blades used for filleting—bore blood both dried and fresh. And there were shears and small saws utile to the disseverance of bones: post-mortem appliances.
“Whatever does he do with all these…tools?” In truth, I cannot recall, and so cannot here record, which of us spoke that question, but I can say that neither of us responded; for the answer was borne on the blood, as it were. And it was then, as I stood contemplating same, that I heard him:
Sto-ker, Sto-ker…
“Caine!” said I, startling my companion, who kept his kerchief clasped to his mouth with one hand whilst holding the other over his heart, as if to guard against its extraction. “Caine, can you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Listen,” I said, for still the name, my name came. Nearer? Louder? “Oh, can you not hear that, Caine?”
He swore he could not. I dared not explain what it was I heard, lest Caine panic. But neither would we wait to see if my name, so spoken, betokened the coming, nay the return, of Tumblety to the Albert Mansions.
“Let us go,” I said. “Now.”
Caine, though eager to do as directed, to finally take his leave, to relinquish his rooms for once and for ever, questioned me. Why now? What do you hear? You say you smell something? &c.; but these and further questions I forestalled by saying:-
“Go! Tell the landlady you will return in a few days’ time. Meanwhile, she mustn’t disturb your rooms at all—speak clearly on this point, Caine. But do tell her to alert you at once—by messenger sent to St. Leonard’s Terrace—if anyone else comes to these rooms, day or night.”
“Should I ask her who, if anyone, has already been here?”
“We know who has been here, Caine; we know it all too well. And I’ve reason to believe that your landlady has not seen him.”…that they may neither see me nor understand.
“But oughtn’t she be made to account for all the keys, Bram? Surely Tumblety has somehow secured a key, for how else might he have…?”
“The fact of his having been here is already that, a fact; and I fear that the few answers we may have from the landlady are not worth the risk of rendering her suspicious. Remember, Caine: We must safeguard this site. It is yours, after all.” Lest he miss my meaning, I added, “These are the private rooms of Thomas Henry Hall Caine.” And “Scandal” was the first of the words alluded to. “Ruin” the second.
“What’s more,” said I, “it seems Tumblety hasn’t need of keys to come and go as he pleases.” To Caine’s raised brows, I replied, “I cannot explain, not now; but suffice it to say that, keyless, he nonetheless has had the run of the Lyceum. And may still.” This notion heartened me not at all; for the shuttered Lyceum would seem a suitable lair, now that we’d discovered and deprived him of the one at Albert Mansions. No-one would look for him there, not now, leastways not Inspector Abberline. This he must know; for he is clever: well he knew that word of his return to London would keep Caine at his castle, thereby freeing his bachelor’s suite for Tumblety’s use. But had he learned of the rooms by natural or super-natural means, and if the latter…? I was wondering thus when I heard him again:-
Sto-ker, Sto-ker.
“What is it, Bram?”
“Come,” said I, “let us lock the door and leave.” This we did. I had with me Tumblety’s black bag: his tools of butchery. I had no idea what I would do with them, but as I knew what he would do with them, I bethought myself to deprive him of his blades and thus render his red work more difficult.
We were in a hansom, fully halfway home, when I realised that Caine was speaking to me. I had been so intent on hearing, or blessedly not hearing my name so intoned, that I had not heard Caine speak. I apologised.
“I was simply saying that I shall abandon that suite at once and take rooms elsewhere in—”
“You shall do nothing of the sort,” said I.
“Begging your pardon, Bram, but if I mean to—”
“Those rooms must remain in your name some while longer, I’m afraid.” I stared at Caine, waiting for him to take in my meaning.
“I suppose they are not, at present, ready to be re-let.”
“Indeed not.”
“And I suppose, too, that we ought to play our cards close to the vest till this infernal business be at an end—no sudden changes, I mean to say…. But what of the suite, Bram? If we cannot turn it over to the police, neither can we leave it as it is. And I will not, cannot return there—”
“No, no,” said I, “not us; but someone must right the place before eyes other than ours see it and suspicions regarding its present state fall on you, as doubtless they would do.”
“Yes, yes, of course. What’s wanted is a charwoman type, a maid-of-all-work who—”
“No maid can suppose that is what’s meant by ‘all-work.’…What’s wanted, what’s needed, is a woman at once discreet and desperate.”
“But who, Bram, who? The clean-up must commence at once. You scare me with your talk of my being seen as complicit in, in…”
“Fear not,” said I. “I know just the woman.” And I did. Rather, I do. “But tell me, Caine: Have you cash at hand?”
“I do indeed. And as concerns this matter, Bram, you may consider the store limitless.”
“Fine,” said I. “To-morrow we shall hire our woman.”
To-morrow did, of course, eventuate into yesterday, Thurs., 19 July; and so I can record that we went with Caine’s cash to search out and secure the services of Mrs. Lydia Quibbel, the Lyceum’s recently let-go Tender of the Tenders of Cats. But first:
We returned to St. Leonard’s Terrace from the Albert Mansions. I was grateful—and grateful I remain—that Florence & Noel have gone to stay some weeks with Thornley in Dublin. There they shall be safe, surely; but what’s more: No words could have convinced anyone who knows him that Caine was well. He is not well, and I wonder if he won’t do himself to death with his worrying. Indeed, sedation came to seem in order as Caine peppered our Wednesday-night converse with such questions as, “What if someone had gone into those rooms in my absence and seen…?” and such exclamatory comments as, “Bram, what fools we were! We ought to have looked for the letters!”
Said I, with assuagement, upon the latter point, “It is doubtful, don’t you think, that Tumblety would stash the letters in the rooms of the very man who’d most like to see them destroyed? And let me remind you further, Caine: We have had no indication from Tumblety that he means to blackmail you.” Though true, this was a statement neither of us believed. “And as his…his work in that suite was recently done, the risk you have run of discovery has been minimal.” I did not add that the risk had increased of late, for nothing piques the interest of a landlady more than the admonishment that she keep clear of a locked door; and before Caine could arrive at the same conclusion, I suggested:-
“Brandy?”
“Oh, yes, please,” said Caine, and we sat a long while with the b
ottle between us, sipping, then swilling, and finally progressing unto whisky as I told Caine all I knew of the Osirian myths, of Set, some of it gleaned from my own readings and some of it lately learned from Speranza. And all the while, Tumblety may have been…Alas, it never dawned on me that Tumblety, having had his den disturbed, would seek to disturb ours in turn; and I cannot account for having forgotten those carnal calling cards he had left of late, yet I did. Doubtless I wanted to. And I’d even opened the parlour window, so that Tumblety may well have been there in the bordering bushes, listening as I held forth to Caine on all things Setian; for he was there sometime prior to dawn. Of this we’d soon have proof.
As I myself have had resort to laudanum of late, I knew I had enough in store to offer some to Caine later that evening. He accepted with alacrity, whereupon we both rose to retire to our rooms, carafes in hand.14
Amazingly, I slept a short while. More amazingly, when I woke, my first thought was not of Mr. Penfold but rather of the open parlour window: Florence would have had my head for having left it so, for having exposed the furnishings to the dirt and dust of a London night, a London dawn. Indeed, it was dawn when I woke, the habit having been established of late: best I find any carcasses left lying about before they be espied by the neighbours, the early-coming carters of coal, or the blue-smocked butchers’ boys working the Terrace. Only then did I realise I’d left the window open to more than dirt: I’d left it open to a demon.
Down the stairs I flew in naught but my nightshirt.
Shutting the open window, I progressed sill to sill: nothing, no death left for my discovery. So it was that with hopes of a bloodless Thursday I went into the scullery to do the minimum of what the maids usually do. (Mem.: Send word to Ada and Mary that they are free to stay away as long as they like, with pay. Speak to Caine on the latter point.) Already I’d put off those costers who come to the door daily, telling them that as both the missus and the maids were away, ’twas Bachelor’s Ways for me till further notice, &c., and just as I thought, No need to listen for the door, I realised I had not checked the front stoop. It was then the day went luckless; for:
Spread diagonally and stretched to its full length, there lay the flayed carcass of a large dog. Naught but the head had been left intact: the rest was skinless and raw, horrid. Its cavity had been opened towards the door, towards where I stood barefoot on the threshold. One step more and I’d have slid in its viscera, ranged in a red-show upon the stoop. So large was the canine, the carcass—here was a hound many sizes larger than the two he’d tried to dispose of at the Beefsteak Club—…so large was the carcass and so artful its arrangement, I could see clearly where the heart had lately lain. As I stared at that absence, there came from the cavity, crawling forth over the entrails, first one, then a second scorpion, white as the still-dawning light. And just as the scent of violets rose to my nose, I heard behind me that sudden intake of breath that presages a scream.
I turned round to find Caine standing there in his nightclothes. Fortunately, he was able to forestall the scream; and indeed here was Caine converted to a Man of Action: He backed into the house horrified but returned quickly with that sheet Mary uses to cover the couch when the coal is delivered. (Mem.: Replace this before F.’s return).
We buried the hound in its now-bloody shroud in a hole that took us nearly an hour to dig. In the course of doing same—as stealthily as daylight allowed—I spoke of the scorpions and the violets only to discover that indeed Caine had neither seen the former nor smelt the latter. I heartened somewhat at being believed, but nothing more was said on the subject. I refilled the hole and concealed it as best I could with squares of cut sod whilst Caine set to upon the stoop with bucket & brush.
We were to meet up over the scullery sink, there to cleanse ourselves of our respective filth—soil in my case, blood in his; but the look upon Caine’s face when he came to join me made me fear he’d been found at his work. The truth was worse: He had discovered something half-stuffed in the letterbox. A scroll of sorts. He’d not dared to read it. Wordlessly, with red and trembling fingers, he handed it over to me.
The paper was parchment-like. The words were written in what surely was blood.15 And as I unfurled the scroll to its full length and weighted it down upon the chopping block, my eye fell to its signatures, plural; for there were two.
The first, I knew, was Francis Tumblety’s. To this, Caine attested as well; although, said he, “It shows a feebleness new to me.”
“Not feebleness, I fear, but rather its opposite: a strength he cannot yet control.” A super-natural strength attributable to his possessor.
“Whatever is that?” Caine pointed to pictures sitting left of Tumblety’s signature. These were more steadily written, or rather drawn, and I knew of an instant what they were; for I’d found the same strand in a book borrowed from Budge. I explained to Caine that here was Set’s hieroglyphic signature:
“Good God!” exclaimed Caine.
“No,” said I, “…not a good god at all.”
Caine, standing at my side, struggled to read aloud the note’s scribbled, stilted English, which I here transcribe as accurately as I am able, underlining those words written in the hand of Francis Tumblety so as to distinguish them from that secondary, stronger-seeming hand that showed the influence of Set:
“My heart, my mother; my heart, my mother! My heart, my being! May naught oppose me at Judgement and may there be no opposition to me Returning now to the Presence of the Chiefs who caused my Name to reek, and may there be no second condemnation of Set by He Who Keepeth the Balance! Heed me, Thou in Whom dwelleth my ka and khaibit!16
“I heed You, mighty Set. I heed He who strengthens my limbs. May You come forth through me. May You use me. May You Rise and be Redeemed!
“And may thou hearken to and heed the coming Judgement so that thou may spread word of He Who Hath Been Wronged. Thou will sayeth that the heart of Set hath been weighed anew and that His Heart-soul hath borne testimony on His behalf and that He hath been Redeemed upon the Great Balance. Thou will sayeth that there hath not been found Wickedness in Him and that He hath not committed any Evil act and that He hath not set His mouth in motion with Words of Evil. This they say Set did whilst He walked the earth. And so the Scales of Truth fell against Him!
“You were adjudged wrong, mighty Set.
“Heed well the Weighing in the Balance of the harvested hearts of Set!
“I will pay heed. I will harvest the hearts.
“Onto the Balance shall go the worthless hearts to show as false the Feather of Maat and to show the Truth of Set! Set shall be Rightly Judged against these hearts and Set shall Rise and be the Beloved Lord of the Two Lands. He shall sit amongst the Favored Ones.
“So shall it come to pass, mighty Set.
“How great Set shall be when He Rises!
“Great the mighty Set! Rise the mighty Set!
“Let no man bear testimony against Set in the presence of the Keeper of the Balance! He who speaketh against Set shall have his heart devoured by Am-mit and have his Heart-soul bound in fetters in the Boat of Millions for all Time, for Set is Time and Set is greater than all gods. So Set decrees.
“I am Am-mit. I harvest and devour hearts at Your bidding. I shall rip the hinderers even if their hearts be worthy. I shall rip them as You command it.
“So commandeth Set.”
Only as I let the scroll fall back onto the scullery table did I realise I’d taken it up. Caine and I watched as it curled unto itself like…like a scorpion’s tail. Indeed, we stood there some while before Caine quoted from the scroll, so:
“‘I shall rip the hinderers….’ Am I right in reading that as a threat, Bram? To us: the hinderers?”
Caine wanted me to say he was wrong. This I could not do.
“And if we are worthy, who then might the worthless be?…I don’t suppose he means literary critics.”
“No,” said I, heartened by the humour—as rare as it was ill-timed—for it a
ssured me of Caine’s sanity and set my fears of his nervous collapse at a remove, albeit a slight remove. “We cannot know who the worthless may be, not yet; but I recall to you the fact that I saw Tumblety in Batty Street, and have heard him elsewhere in Whitechapel…and is not Whitechapel chockablock with those the world deems worthless?”
“Oh, my,” said Caine; who then swallowed hard before saying, summarily, “This work he sets about is not done. This scroll is prophecy. Prophecy and threat. Prophesying that some poor ‘worthless’ sot is soon to fall victim to Tumblety’s mistaking metaphor for…for murder! And threatening we hinderers besides!” With a gesture towards the yard’s freshest grave and a look down at his unwashed hands, Caine concluded, “This dog was slain to warn us.”
“Secondarily so, I would suppose,” said I. “Primarily, I fear, it was but further practice for Tumblety as Am-mit, the harvester, the Devourer of Hearts. After all, the poor hound’s heart was ripped from it…. Mouse to cat to hound to—”
“Homo sapiens? Good God, Bram! A progression through the species, do you mean to say?” Whereupon no further words were wanted, and so we set to scrubbing at the sink, each of us silent and staring as the dirt and blood swirled darkly down the drain.
I needn’t record that we weren’t much in the mood to breakfast yesterday after…all that; but neither did we wish to stay in a house so lately violated. Thus it was that we dressed fast and betook ourselves some blocks away to The Hare and Harp, where we perused the morning papers, rather desultorily, it must be said, as already we’d had news enough from the shadow world; but then, finally, our tea having gone cold, our toast having hardened, we both of us struck upon the same plan—this business about the blood and an amenable maid—and thereby brightened a bit.
I drew from a pocket paper & pencil and began a letter addressed to Mrs. Lydia Quibbel, lately the Lyceum’s Tender of the Tenders of Cats; meanwhile, I confessed to Caine my guilt at having had to let the lady go: