“None for me,” said Holmes as he passed us the cups. Opening the curtain a bit, we sipped tea and watched as gales of leaves blew past our coach in the Shropshire landscape, now growing dark. The fuming mills of Birmingham and Wolverhampton were behind us, the colder country ahead of us, and as we clipped along I felt the pull of the north where I had spent my childhood school days. I thought of late autumn teas at Stonyhurst after the day’s studies, nighttime in the afternoon, and chatter and singing by the fire.
I began to drift off to sleep but was awakened by an abrupt snore from Sister Carolina, followed by a chuckle from Holmes. He held up a small vial of clear liquid in his hand.
“She will sleep for a time. I wanted to have a word with you alone.”
“And I want to have a few words with you,” I snapped. “You’ve medicated Sister without her knowledge?”
“Just a drop or two of chloral hydrate. It will hardly do any harm… .”
Anger welled up in me. At last I could speak freely. “That is just one instance of your callous behavior. You’ve been outrageously irresponsible… Abandoning us to some obscure gang of brutes … They attacked me and my nephew, my four-year-old nephew! Dragging us across London in a reckless chase … .”
“Your nephew loved it,” said Holmes calmly.
“How did you know that?”
He leaned forward and spoke intently. “Not for one moment have you been out of my sight. If you hadn’t disregarded my instructions, you would have been safe.”
“You were watching all the time?”
“My irregulars were watching and reporting to me. They are boys of the London streets—invisible to the fine Christians of the City—whom I recruit to do my work instead of the work that would put them in prison. They roam the streets on missions for me by day and sleep warm at the gasworks by night. The boy who brought you here, Deputy, is their leader. Not his real name of course—all the boys in the gasworks are called ‘Deputy.’”
I was taken aback, but still hurt. “That’s all very well, but then I find you sprawling in an opium den in the slums, polluting yourself with a crowd of maniacs. I begin to suspect that your craving for tobacco is only the slightest of your obsessions… . That filthy woman … .”
“That filthy woman,” Holmes bent close enough to breathe in my face, “is the richest source of information about the underworld in the entire city of London. Before you throw stones at her, you would do well to learn something of what goes on in the lives of the miserable people who live beneath your respectable feet, Father Tuck.”
Somewhat chastened, I asked, “Well, then, who is she? What information … ?”
“No one knows her real name. She is called Princess Puffer, and she knows enough about the criminals that haunt this city to put them all in jail for good, and they know she does. That makes her safe from them. Frankly, her knowledge is also her source of income, for many fear her speaking.
“Not all the ravings that fill her den are meaningless rubbish. She has a keen ear for the shameful secrets that leach up from the depths of those tormented souls, and she knows how to profit by them.”
“A skillful blackmailer.”
“Oh, yes, but not a vicious one,” said Holmes. “She holds a knife at the underbelly of London, it’s true, but she holds it steady.”
“Then how is it she shares her information with you?”
“Because I hold a knife at her throat. I know enough to end her career quite abruptly, and that makes us the best of friends.”
I was curious about something. “A respectable-looking man came out of that den just as I arrived. He appeared every bit the tormented soul you speak of—I wonder who he is.”
“His name is John Jasper,” Holmes replied, offhand. “According to the Princess, he is of all things a cathedral choirmaster who mutters in his stupor about killing someone named ‘Ned.’ She seems uncommonly interested in this Jasper, which in turn piques my interest as well, so perhaps one day I shall look into it. But for now we have much bigger fish to land.”
“What information did you get from her?”
“Enough to confirm my darkest suspicions. You and the Sister, and now I, have become targets of the most dangerous society in England, and perhaps in America as well.” His voice dropped even lower and he looked about the compartment as he said it. Sister still breathed quietly in her corner.
I was incredulous. “That can’t be true,” I said. “Whoever they are, what would they want with Sister and me? We are the most inconsequential of people.”
“We are all inconsequential until we enter into the calculations of evil. The head of that society—well, suffice it to say I could not rest, Tuck, I could not sit quiet in my chair, if I thought that such a man as that were walking the streets of London unchallenged.” “What man? Is he the master criminal you’ve spoken of?”
“He is the Napoleon of crime, Tuck. He is a capital brain—a planner, a strategist, a director, a controller, at the center of the inner circle of much of the ill-gotten wealth in this world. He is within three or four steps of every criminal enterprise on both shores of the Atlantic. Like most rich men, he does little himself, but he moves invisibly, like a toxic fluid, from one grand crime to another, enriching himself unimaginably each time.”
“He sounds like one of these barons of Wall Street,” I observed.
“It is a distinction without a difference, my dear Tuck. His Piccadilly address—where you went sniffing about like a bull terrier—is the clearing house for most of the big robberies in Europe and America. His fine ‘Italian hand’ can be traced to almost every one of them, but never proven. Against him, I have found it impossible to get evidence which would convict in a court of law, and am forced to confess that I have at last met my intellectual equal.”
I disregarded his smirking reference to my adventure at 198 Piccadilly. “Does this fiend have a name?”
“His names are legion, and additionally I have my own private name for him. You will perhaps recall twin boys at school some years behind us who took great pleasure in mocking me. They were brilliant, both of them, one a mathematical genius and the other as devious and malicious a schemer as I have ever encountered. He has just been named attorney general for Ireland.”
“You refer to the Moriarty brothers.”
“Precisely. This master criminal combines in one person the calculating brain of the one and the artful malevolence of the other, so I call him ‘Moriarty.’”
“But how do we concern this Moriarty?”
“It was he who organized the attack on the Pope, and by my interference I have drawn his attention to myself. I confess it is a fearful thing to enter into the labyrinth of this monster.”
“Thus your painstaking disguises and cunning in moving about. Is it by our association with you that Sister and I have become his targets?”
“In part, but the issue is much deeper than that. There is something afoot, a scheme of large proportions that is linked to the Tarleton murders.”
“What scheme?”
“It is taking shape only vaguely in my mind, but I believe it to be a monstrous shape. If Moriarty remains true to form, I have little hope of ensnaring him, but every hope of foiling him.”
“I begin to understand your sudden eagerness to take on Sister Carolina’s case. But can you not explain to me her connection to Moriarty?”
“For her own good—and for yours, I might add—I prefer to keep it to myself for now,” replied Holmes. “There are things it were better for you not to know. But our journey to Liverpool, I hope, will establish the connection firmly in my own mind, and if I am not mistaken, we have nearly arrived at the ferry to that great city. Let’s summon the Sister from sleep and cross the Mersey.”
Chapter 11
Travel is wearing, and I slept the sleep of a worn-out man that night. Holmes and I had installed
Sister Carolina in a friendly convent guesthouse and gone on to a cheap hotel near the waterfront, where I dropped like death into bed. So I was shocked awake in the darkness when Holmes pulled on my foot.
“Up, Tuck. It’s time to be off.” I lit a candle and consulted my watch. It was five o’clock in the morning, a fact I pointed out to him with some annoyance. He responded by pulling my foot hard enough to wrench me out of bed.
“What about breakfast?” I asked.
Holmes groaned. I dressed in my brother-in-law’s old suit and we were out in the frozen street, where I managed to find some hot tea from an ice-covered tea shop and Holmes found a sleepy cab driver.
“Where are we going?” I asked, burying myself deep in my too-small coat and drinking tea that tasted like boiling seawater.
“To the plumber’s.”
Of course. To the plumber’s. I was too cold and tired to inquire further, and fell into a daze that lasted until we stopped at a mechanic’s shop, from whence I heard the squeal of hungry hogs, along with the rattle of machinery.
Holmes leaped out and rapped at the door, which was opened by a loose-jointed young man pulling his braces over his shoulders and shaking out a prodigious head of black hair.
“Mr. James McCartney, plumber?” Holmes boomed at him.
“It’s Jimmy,” the young man grinned. “You Mr. Escott? Got your wire and I am at your service.”
“Then let’s get on with it.” Holmes vaulted back into the cab, while McCartney collected his coat and toolbox.
He squeezed in next to me and gave me an ironic smile. “I’m Jimmy. Close friends already, eh?” He spoke in the voice of a man with a severe cold in his head, but then so did everyone else I had met in Liverpool.
I gave Holmes a curious look, and he whispered to me that we needed a real plumber for the job we were about to do. Again I was too preoccupied with keeping myself warm to worry any more about it. “Jimmy” mused at me as we clipped along. “Soily business, plumbering. Most as soily as raising hogs. But that there’s Christmas bacon, idn’t it? Party’s on. Only comes this time o’ year, you know.”
After about an hour of the young plumber’s random singsong, we alighted at the gate of a house that looked to be moldering away in a tide of sleet. “Wind blows hard and cold this time of year,” Jimmy said with delight, strangely invigorated by the nightmare weather. I growled and followed him and Holmes round the house to the servants’ entrance.
“Remember, McCartney,” Holmes said. “We are here to make an inspection: that is all. You will be paid well to inspect. There is no need to do any actual plumbing.”
“No worries, sir.”
Holmes pulled the bell rope, and we waited a freezing eternity for an elderly housekeeper to open up.
“Finch House?” Holmes asked. “I am Mr. Escott of Escott and Tuck, consulting plumbers. This is Mr. Tuck, and this is Mr. McCartney. We wired you?”
“Here so urly?” the old woman gurgled in the clogged local accent as she motioned us into a kitchen that smelled of warm decay. “My, such ambitious young men. And so sturrdy, too. Come in, come in. I am Mrs. Throstle. Tea?”
I accepted gratefully, Holmes declined, and Jimmy pattered, “A cup o’ English tea, very twee, very twee… .”
“To work, McCartney.” Holmes was blunt. The young man rustled through his tools and began examining the kitchen pipes while Holmes gestured at me to sit next to him at the servants’ table. The old woman plumped down exhausted by the effort of pouring tea for us.
“As we advised, Mrs. Throstle, we are here on behalf of a party interested in purchasing the property, merely to inspect the drains and report back to him,” Holmes lied smoothly.
“And very wise, too,” the housekeeper beamed. “The family have been trying to sell for so long, but no one wants it. I fear the old place is like me—the foundation all eaten up and rising damp in the cellar. No doubt the old pipes are as bunged up as me own pipes.”
I smiled for the first time that day.
“Damp in the basement, damp in the wall,” Jimmy purred, clanking at the pipes with his spanner. “Water’s drippin’ from the standpipe,” he announced.
Holmes looked at him with annoyance, then turned back to the housekeeper. “How long have you been with the Tarleton family, Mrs. Throstle?”
She laughed softly. “I was born in survice. Mum and Dad were both born in survice to the Tarletons. So you could say I’ve always been with the family.”
I began to understand what we were doing in this blighted old house so “urly” in the morning.
“It’s a storied family,” Holmes gave her an oily smile to encourage her.
“Oh, and such stories, too. Before they was bankrupted, they was slavers, all of ‘em. That’s where the money come from.” She took a mouthful of tea. “Me dad would be right chapped at me for talking of it. But that’s what they was. Slavers.”
“Yes, that was a terrible business,” sighed Holmes.
“A soily business!” added Jimmy, who shrank at Holmes’s threatening glance. “Er, drains all mucked up.”
“But wasn’t there a family hero? Colonel Tarleton?” Holmes asked.
“Family hero,” she clucked. “I wouldn’t put it like that. You mean our Bloody Ban, don’t you.”
“You wouldn’t put it like that? If I remember right, he distinguished himself in the Colonies.”
“That I wouldn’t know. They was slavers, all of ‘em.”
Holmes leaned in. “The family who are selling the house, are they the Colonel’s descendants?”
“Oh, no. Not at all. It’s the cousins. Sir Ban and Lady had no children, you know. La, they didn’t care for each other, you might say. Me old grandmum told us. Toast?” The old lady shifted to warm some bread on a long fork over the fire.
“None for us, thank you,” said Holmes. I longed for toast and grimaced at him, but he took no notice. “No children at all? And what of Perdita?”
At the mention of this name, the old woman’s eyes tightened and she pulled at the strings of her bonnet as if to close it round her face. “What of Purdita?” she echoed. “What of her?” I feared that Holmes had probed a bit too deeply.
Her eyes now shut, she sniffed gently at the toasting bread, and for a moment I thought she had forgotten about us. Then she laughed, “Me old brain. Memories blocked up.”
“Sweeeet memories,” Jimmy crooned from the hole he was digging under the sink. “Valves all corroded.”
“Save it for your report,” Holmes shot back at him, then turned to the pensive Mrs. Throstle. “Didn’t Perdita have a child?” he asked straight out.
The old lady bent her head, embarrassed. “It’s not something that was talked about. Grandmum was so very close about it, she was a midwife, don’t you know. But it’s so long ago now, nigh on a hundred year I’d say. No doubt they’re all dead now that knowed aught about it.”
“About what?” Holmes coaxed her, gently. “About the child?”
“Little Rafe, they called him. They packed him up and sent him to the Indies with old Tiggonah. She died horrible, they say. A allergator got her, they say.” Mrs. Throstle began to nod over her fire. “How would that be? To be et by a allergator.”
“I’d save you from the allergator, Missus,” Jimmy sang out from his hole.
“Sweet boy. And look at all the beautiful hair he’s got on top—we could mop the floor with that,” she chuckled, watching Jimmy’s head poking out from beneath the sink. Then a pause, and she slipped back into her reverie. “She never was the same after that. Just brooded away in a despond from losing her child to the Indies, raving in a frenzy, writing poems and such—that was our Purdita.”
“I thought she miscarried,” Holmes said.
“You’re fearful well informed, aren’t you sir? Well, it was given out as such, but the master had lots of sh
ips running in those days and he put the baby and the slave woman on a ship. They was never seen again. She was et by an allergator, they say.”
“Why was the baby sent away?”
“Why? ‘T wouldn’t do now, would it, for the master to be raising up a child from the wrong side of the blanket, as folks say? So off they goes to the Indies.” In the earthy warmth from the fire, Mrs. Throstle was becoming somnolent, and I could see that Holmes was becoming impatient.
“We have all of the information we came for,” he muttered to me.
“All?” I asked, but he was up and keen to go.
“McCartney! We’ve finished. It’s time to be on our way.”
Jimmy’s face appeared from the depths, bewildered and streaked with grime. “I’ve not finished. I’m almost at the bottom of the pipe, and when I gets to the bottom, I goes back to the top.”
“You’ve reached bottom and we’re leaving. Come along.”
“Right-o. As you say.” Jimmy grinned and wiped his face with a rag that rendered it blacker. We made our goodbyes to the housekeeper and sallied out into the sleet once again.
“Never did find that leak,” Jimmy lamented as we crowded back into a cab. “But then that’s the joy of plumbering. There’s always refreshers. ‘When you ask a working man, does he ever stop? No, he work until he drop.’”
Jimmy was nothing if not lyrical. We let him off at home and Holmes ordered me to give him a half-sovereign.
“A half-sovereign?” I protested, diving into my pockets for a coin. It was a lot of money for a morning’s useless work. “He’s a poor man,” Holmes whispered.
“So am I,” I whispered back.
“You have vowed to be poor,” he rejoined.
“What about my report? Don’t you want to hear it?” Jimmy called after us, but goaded by Holmes, we were galloping back toward the waterfront.
“Things are coming nicely,” Holmes said, breathing in the salty air before lighting his pipe. “Mrs. Throstle has woven a good many threads together for us, and the tapestry is beginning to take shape.”
The Tarleton Murders Page 8