“So Tarleton did have a child, which opens the possibility of descendants. But she said the child was taken to the Indies … .”
“The West Indies, Tuck. The New World, not the Old. What she told us fits well into what I already knew about the Tarleton family. They were indeed in the slave trade, and in a very significant way. Colonel Tarleton’s father and brothers controlled a good tenth of the trade triangle between Africa, Britain, and America, and the brutal way in which they conducted the trade brought much unwanted attention from Parliament.
“Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of African slaves died in the horror of Tarleton ships, and although the brothers fought for it, the vicious traffic was at last abolished in part because the Tarletons were determined to keep it going. The anti-slavery movement began in Parliament about the time the child of Perdita and Colonel Tarleton was due. I surmise that the family could not afford a scandal at that delicate moment, so the child was packed off to the Tarletons’ plantation in the West Indies, where he could grow up well away from it all.”
“That is a lot of surmising,” I observed.
“But it is all based on fact. We even know the child’s name—Rafe, or Ralph—probably in honor of an old Tarleton patriarch, Ralph William.”
“You have become an authority on the Tarleton family.”
“The fruit of my hours in the British library these past days. If the imbecilic British police could find their way to the library, or were even aware of its existence, much of their endless footwork would be unnecessary.”
“So you have now linked the Old World Tarletons to the New World,” I said. “Where do we go from here?”
“To the New World! Or rather, you go. I am staying behind.”
“What do you mean?”
“You and Sister are booked for passage to Philadelphia tomorrow morning.”
“What? You have already arranged it?” I was stunned.
“Yes. You will board the steamer Nebraska at ten o’clock under your own names, in keeping with your passports. You have finished your pilgrimage to Rome and visited your family in Britain, and now you are as a matter of course returning to your duties.”
“But … what about the case? What are we to do without you?”
“You are to do exactly as I tell you.”
I couldn’t accept this. “I am not one of your London irregulars to be ordered about. I insist on being consulted, not commanded… .”
“Believe me, your life depends on doing what I ask.”
“Consulted, not commanded!” I said again. “And I will not be put off by talk of some obscure threat I don’t understand. I must know precisely what our position is before you ship us off to who knows what fate.”
As we were approaching our hotel, Holmes was silent for a time. “Very well,” he muttered, somewhat disdainfully. “Let’s find a little privacy and I shall ‘consult’ with you.”
Back in our chilly room, Holmes locked the door behind us, sat on the bed, and breathed out smoke. I could tell that he was calculating in his mind just how much to share with me. For my part, I realized that crossing the ocean meant that I might never lay eyes on Holmes again, and I felt an abrupt pain at the thought. A few days with him had awakened in me a strange comradeship I had never experienced before. Now he was sending me away.
As if he sensed my feelings, Holmes spoke almost gently. “Tuck, I have been guarded with you because, in this affair, the shadow of danger to our lives is real, and it is death to know too much about certain people. That is the case with Moriarty.
“As I have said, by disregarding my instructions in London you have already put us and your family in jeopardy. Your adventure with the cabbie was intended to warn you off. Our encounter at Princess Puffer’s was another warning.
“Moriarty does not commit murder casually—there must be a significant reward—but he will act to remove a threat if he deems it to be serious.”
“Holmes,” I said, “I am willing to do as you think proper, but you cannot expect me to merely return to Charleston and forget all about it.”
“If only you could,” Holmes replied with a pained smile. “If only you could go back to America and forget all about it. In fact, I took some pains to keep you out of the web of this monster, but you are entangled in it now so we must see it through.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that Moriarty’s web stretches to Charleston—and well beyond. To escape that web, I will ask you to do a certain task in Charleston that will likely put you in further danger. But sometimes it is necessary to push forward in order to go back.”
“You have spoken of a connection between Moriarty and the killing of the Tarletons at Gettysburg,” I said. “Does the task you speak of bear on this connection?”
“It has a direct bearing.”
“Holmes, what is the connection? What could possibly link an American battlefield killing to a master English criminal?”
“Moriarty is not English. Nor is he American. I am not entirely sure of his provenance, although I suspect it lies somewhere in central Europe. As for his connection to the Tarletons, let me show you.”
Once again he pulled out of his waistcoat pocket the document he always kept to himself and spread it out on the bed. “Here,” he said, “surely you’ve noticed the seemingly random sprinkling of dots that look like full stops. There is one dot per line, except for the last line.”
O.
LET T.HE TAR LET ON,
B.eware! Let the Feathers reveal,
Raging bloody w.ax Fire be set,
On thy Bans! Awe thy Confessi.onal Seal!
Thou shalt drink Fate. in Wine, be it distilled Gall!
Hell’s bread shalt. avenged in Tartarus eat!
Even Thy Goddess in the d.epths of Acheron shall fall!
Revenge! T.hou shalt drink the shame of it Sweet!
Shad.owed Brotherhood! If we Heaven’s will cannot avert, Hell
Let us move. Charon bring thee o’er his Flood to meet,
In Ro.bes and burning Cross and Blood Drops to lie,
Even there. where the Prince of Air forever flames up howling,
PETIT AND PERDITION! BAP.ST AND BLAZES! STRICKEN AND SEALED!
CHAOS AND CURSES!
DO NOT OPEN PANDORAS BOX OR YOU WILL FEEL
THE WRATH OF THE KU, KLUX, KLAN!
“Yes, I bludgeoned my brains over those dots but could make nothing of them,” I replied.
“Nor could I, until I recognized them as a simple alphabetic code. There are twenty-six letters in the alphabet, and each letter has a number—A is one, B is two, C is three, and so forth. When you count the letter spaces over to each dot, you arrive at a letter. Try it.”
We created this table to make our work easier.
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
>
S
T
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
21
22
23
24
25
26
Then I began counting the letter spaces in each line until arriving at the dot. There was only one letter space in the first line, so the letter must be “A.” The second line had four letter spaces before the dot, so the next letter must be “D.” We continued in this way until we deciphered all fourteen letters.
ADAMWROTHDIDIT
It meant nothing to me. “Adam Wroth did it? Who is Adam Wroth?”
Holmes stood and listened for a moment at the door, then verified that it was locked.
“It is an intriguing name. I believed it is misspelled, perhaps deliberately, for the man in question is certainly ‘wroth,’ that is, filled with cruelty. I told you that Moriarty’s real name is unknown, but there is some evidence that he was born ‘Adam Worth’ somewhere in Germany. If Moriarty is indeed Adam Worth, he has not been known by that name for many years.”
“This evidence you speak of …”
“In response to an inquiry I made to Pinkertons, the famous American detective agency. Adam Worth was well known to them. When he made America too hot to hold him, he escaped to Paris where he opened an American bar and made a fortune in illegal gaming.
“A mathematical prodigy, Worth subtly cheated his guests of many thousands of francs in ways they were never even aware of. Then some five years past, a Pinkerton man—Allan Pinkerton himself—happened to enter the bar and recognized him, so Worth moved his operation immediately to London. Each year, as I told you, he has become more and more powerful.
“A remarkable genius of crime, he has been untouchable—until now. When I first deciphered Moriarty’s real name in your poison-pen letter, I realized at once that I might—at long last—have in my hand the only tangible evidence I have ever found of Adam Worth’s involvement in an actual crime.”
“Which made you all the keener to take my case.” I was still staring at the now worn-out document in Holmes’s hands. “But what could this man Worth, or Wroth, have to do with the Tarletons?”
“That is precisely what you must discover, Tuck, on the other side of the sea.”
TRANSATLANTIC
Chapter 12
As we steamed away from Queenstown, I was bored and anxious at the same time. I stood on the stern leaning at the taffrail, watching the ocean eat up the land and the dark sky and water converging on the horizon.
We were eight tedious days from Philadelphia. My third crossing of the Atlantic had none of the fretful charm of the first or even the second. This time I was facing a task that disturbed me deeply but that I could not avoid. As a priest, I recognized that fear should not dominate my life, and it did not; but I confess that I dreaded what was to come and wished it were over and done with. I would not be sleeping well on the steamship Nebraska.
The ship began laboring into heavier water, so I went below to the library in search of a book to while away the time. Almost at once I found a slim volume of poems by Mary Robinson—our Perdita. I opened it idly and read.
AH LOVE! thou barb’rous fickle boy,
Thou semblance of delusive joy,
Too long my heart has been thy slave:
For thou hast seen me wildly rave,
And with impetuous frenzy haste,
Heedless across the thorny waste,
And drink the cold dews, ere they fell
On my bare bosom’s burning swell.
The couplets kept rhythm with the sway of the ship, and I felt what Perdita must have felt, passing day after day in hopeless, frenzied pleas for her delusive lover to keep his pledges to her. I felt what it must feel to be abandoned, coldly pushed aside, and robbed of her only child.
Perhaps I might be instrumental in bringing her the only earthly justice she would ever get.
I sat in the library reading until it was too dark, then went to my stateroom to wash up before dinner. Sister Carolina and I had been invited to the captain’s table for our first night on the main, and when we arrived in the dining room it was quite inviting with lamps on the walls and white cloths on the tables. A small orchestra played for us thirty or so first-cabin guests, all kitted up in formal wear except for Sister and myself. It was paradoxical to think that this decorous scene was playing out in a box suspended on black ocean water five-hundred feet deep.
As we were a bit early, we found our places at the captain’s empty table and munched celery as we listened to the music. The orchestra played mediocre music-hall tunes, although I thought the violinist exceptional. Soon a couple joined us, pleasantly white-haired Americans on their way home from “the trip abroad.” Then another couple arrived, and I found I was not the only clergy aboard: a shiny-faced Dr. Shlessinger, an Anglican missionary from Australia, and Mrs. Shlessinger. They were followed by a man and woman who couldn’t be husband and wife from the furtive looks they gave everyone else—the man had the snaky mustache and flattened hair of a circus performer; the “woman” with him was clearly a female impersonator.
I exchanged greetings with everyone; sister was her reserved self and settled for a drawn smile. We all shared banalities about the weather, worries about the lateness of the season, and apprehensions about icebergs.
Then I looked up and nearly dropped my celery.
Three people were approaching our table. I didn’t recognize the men, one of whom was short with an easy manner and well-combed side whiskers and the Order of the Golden Spur on a ribbon round his neck, the other tall with the goatee of Napoleon III and the same badge affixed to his coat; but the woman was our acquaintance from the Rome-to-Paris train—the seductive Mrs. Katherine Wells.
“Padre!” she sang out as she caught sight of me. “What a delight to meet you again.”
I stood. “How wonderful to see you, Mrs. Wells. You’ll remember my traveling companion, Sister Carolina.” Sister gave her a sour smile, and I turned to the gentlemen with her. “Do I have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Wells in one of you?”
“No, my husband is in America waiting for me,” she said. The tall man was a Count Schindler of Brussels. As for the other, “This is my old friend Mr. Henry J. Raymond of New York.”
Raymond bowed and introductions round the table followed. His name caused a stir with the white-haired couple, who whispered to each other and then both gazed intently at the man as if they knew him.
The steward seated Mrs. Wells next to me. Once again I was taken with her mound of soft blonde hair glowing in the lamplight and the warm fragrance that I had first noticed that night in the train crossing Italy. Again, I am a priest, but also a man perfectly able to appreciate the aesthetic appeal of such a woman.
At last we were joined by the ship’s captain, a diffident man buried in a beard, who had little to say after bowing to the company and taking his seat.
We were confronted with an enormous dinner, starting with julienne soup and baked halibut in wine sauce and calves’ feet jelly, followed by our choice of corned pork and cabbage, fillets of chicken with mushrooms and spinach, or mutton with caper sauce—or all of them! Although I was feeling a bit queasy
from the movement of the ship, I have always had difficulty turning down a fine dinner and ate more than I intended.
As they brought the after-dinner brandy, Mrs. Wells turned playfully to me. “My dear Padre, would you serve me as a father-confessor tonight?”
“I’m sure you have nothing of any moment to confess, Mrs. Wells,” I replied.
“Really, Padre, I have never been so belittled,” she laughed. “We have just been in Italy, so we both know how the Latin heat can melt away even our coldest English scruples. It’s just that I found your companion on the Paris train—Captain Basil, was it? your cousin?—a very attractive man, and I wondered what has become of him.”
Bemused, I told her that he had returned to England. She smiled thoughtfully.
“I confess that he made my heart flutter,” she said. “Where does he live? What does he do?”
“He lives in London, I think in the neighborhood of Bloomsbury. He is a very … um, prosperous plumber.”
“Oh, no, I don’t believe that for a moment. His hands were so beautiful, so soft and expressive, such long, lovely fingers.”
“He is a consulting plumber,” I added.
“Ah, so he never dirties his hands himself. A military man turned prosperous tradesman. How rare. Is he very rich? He must be to have cultivated such an interest in vintage jewelry.”
“I don’t think he is so very rich, but he is selective in his obsessions.”
“And what, besides antique cameos, obsesses him?”
“Tobacco, mostly. And penny dreadfuls. He is always reading them.”
She sniffed a little. “You disillusion me. I had quite a different picture of the man. He seemed to be so intelligent, analytical … probing.”
“There you are not wrong. Intelligent undoubtedly, and he is very analytical when it comes to muck and corruption—in water pipes, I mean. As for probing, he generally leaves that to others.”
“I confess some disappointment. When I saw you, Padre, I was hoping your cousin might be nearby.”
“His business in London presses him a good deal.”
The Tarleton Murders Page 9