by James McGee
Hawkwood closed his eyes. “God’s teeth.”
“He was unable to expand on his theory. He simply said it was a possibility.”
“What about Home Secretary Ryder? Did he have anything else to say?”
“I’m afraid the Home Secretary doesn’t like you, Hawkwood. He told me I was to keep you muzzled. He also wants you to hunt the colonel down.” Read gazed out of the carriage window. “One wonders how you can do one if you’re constrained by the other.”
“The man’s an idiot,” Hawkwood said.
“A harsh judgement.”
“Not really,” Hawkwood said. “From what I’ve seen of them, most politicians are idiots. It’s a known fact. All the trouble in the world is started by politicians. And when they realize they can’t get themselves out of trouble, they expect people like you and me to step in to protect their arses.”
“And how do you propose to protect the Home Secretary’s … er … arse?” Read asked.
“Maybe I should be looking for the men who are working for Hyde,” Hawkwood said. “If I can find them, it’s possible they’ll lead me to the colonel.”
“You’re talking about the men who left the bodies outside Bart’s?”
“You still think I’m clutching at straws?”
Read stared out of the window. Finally he turned back. “Have you thought how you are going to find them?”
“By doing something I should have done a while ago.”
“Talking to your former comrade-in-arms, perhaps?”
“With,” Hawkwood said. “Not to.”
A nerve trembled at the corner of the magistrate’s mouth.
“If anyone can get me information on them, it’s Nathaniel. Though it’s been a while since we talked.”
Read raised an eyebrow.
“I think he might have been insulted when I offered him Henry Warlock’s job.”
“You’re surprised he turned the position down?”
“Not really. I can’t see him as a Runner. Besides, he told me he couldn’t afford the drop in salary.”
There was a definite twitch along the Chief Magistrate’s jawline that time.
The carriage slowed, clattered towards the kerb, and stopped. Hawkwood got out and held the door open. The coachman tipped his hat and waited until the two men had entered the building before driving off.
“There’s a message for you,” Twigg said, when they entered the ante-room. “He said his name was Leech.” The clerk held out the folded paper.
Hawkwood broke the seal.
I have information that may be pertinent to your investigation. Locke
If she dropped her price any lower, Molly Finn thought dejectedly, she’d be giving it away. Business had been depressingly slow so far and it didn’t look as though it was going to get any better any time soon.
Molly put it down to the weather. It couldn’t seem to make up its mind. One moment, rain; the next sleet and snow. What she was offering had been known to warm up a body and bring a rosy glow to the cheeks – both sets – but if your pig of a landlord kept an eye out for you bringing men back to your room, leaving you with only a cold, damp alleyway in which to conduct your trade, one drop of rain or a snowflake down the back of the neck might be all it took to cool the ardour, then the only thing you’d be left sucking would be your own thumb. And that didn’t pay the rent or put food on the table.
The market’s fruit and vegetable stalls were already enjoying a steady trade, so it wasn’t as though prospective customers were few and far between. The trouble was, even at this early hour, she wasn’t the only moll on show. With its taverns and coffee houses, the competition was starting to build up. Still, the spot she’d secured under the archway at the end of the Piazza was at least dry. Molly undid a couple more buttons of her bodice. A girl had to use what God had given her. In Molly’s case, the good Lord had been very generous. She was a pretty girl, with blonde ringlets, a shapely figure and a pout that would have tempted an archbishop.
Should have, too, but with archbishops thin on the ground, Molly had been forced to flaunt her charms to a less pious clientele; so far, without appreciable success. She was beginning to think that the Haymarket might be a better bet, though it was probably too early for that.
An army officer came striding down the colonnade, handsome in his scarlet uniform and shako cap. It was too good an opportunity to miss. Hands on hips, Molly stepped out, struck a pose, ran her tongue across her lips and favoured him with her trademark smile.
“Hello, Colonel! Lookin’ for some company?”
The colonel, if he was a colonel – flattery never did any harm – walked on without stopping. Molly sighed and watched him disappear into the crowd. Pity, she thought. He hadn’t been bad looking. She eased back against the wall, lifted her shawl over her shoulders, and looked for her next target.
“Makes you wonder if they ’aven’t all turned queer, don’t it?”
Molly turned. The speaker was leaning against the next pillar, arms folded across her breasts. She had elfin features and blue eyes, framed by a cascade of raven hair. An impish grin split her face.
Molly nodded. Rivalry among the working girls could be fierce, but it didn’t mean they didn’t chat in between punters.
“Thought I might try the Haymarket,” Molly said, drawing her shawl about her. “Might get a bite there.”
The dark-haired girl shook her head. Her curls bounced around her cheeks. “Wouldn’t bother. I was there not long back. It was as dead as old Jack. Bloody nippy, too.”
Molly was surprised the girl hadn’t agreed that a change of venue might be worth exploring. With Molly off on a wild-goose chase, it would have increased the other girl’s chances of nabbing a customer.
Molly accepted the information with a rueful smile. The girl put her head on one side and eyed Molly speculatively. “Don’t suppose …?” The girl made a face. “Nah, p’raps not, lass like you.”
“What?” Molly asked.
The girl held Molly’s gaze for several seconds, as if turning a thought over in her mind. Finally, she said, “It’s just that I’ve ’ad an offer from one of my regular gentlemen for a two-up; him an’ a pair of ladies. Nice-lookin’ toff. Likes ’is earlymornin’ exercise. Asked me to pop out and see if I could find somebody.” The girl lifted a suggestive eyebrow. “What d’you think? You interested? Probably wouldn’t take much more than an hour. ’E pays ’andsomely, too. Wouldn’t have to spend the rest of the day freezing our tits off.”
Molly thought about it. “How much is he offering?”
“A guinea for the two.”
Molly’s eyebrows went up.
“Told you he was generous.” The girl grinned. “Not bad, eh?”
Molly usually charged her customers two shillings. Half a guinea for an hour was good money. “An’ you said he was a toff?”
“Proper spoken. He’s a good laugh, too. Better than standin’ around ’ere. You up for it?”
Molly thought about it for all of two heartbeats. “All right, why not?”
The girl laughed and clapped her hands.
“How far is it?” Molly asked.
“Just round the corner. He’s got this room ’e rents, for entertaining, if you know what I mean.” The girl tapped the side of her nose and winked. “Told me when I found someone we were to go right round.” The girl took Molly’s hand. “So why don’t you an’ me go and pay him a little visit and warm ourselves up?”
The two girls left the shelter of the colonnade. Weaving between the stalls and taking care to avoid the puddles and the rats, they made their way across the Piazza.
“What’s your name, sweet’eart?” The girl squeezed Molly’s hand.
“Molly.”
“Mine’s Sally. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Molly.”
Molly grinned in return. Cutting down Southampton Street, the girls turned into Maiden Lane.
The entrance lay between two Roman columns, next to Half-Moon Alley. Abov
e the door were two signs. One proclaimed the place to be the Cider Cellars. The other sign, in the shape of a lantern, advertised Beds.
“Says ’e likes to keep a room ’ere, so it’s nice and ’andy.” Sally giggled. “Just like me!” She tugged Molly down the stairs. The place was packed, traders mostly, enjoying a quick breakfast warmer. The reek of rough liquor, sweat and tobacco was overwhelming.
Sally led the way towards a set of stairs at the far end of the room. Her language was coarse as she slapped away the roving hands. Molly took hold of the hem of Sally’s dress and hung on. They tripped up the stairs and down a passage towards the rear of the building.
“Here we are,” Sally said brightly, stopping outside a door. She smoothed her dress, tugged her bodice down and pinched her cheeks. Reaching out, she pushed up Molly’s breasts and winked. “Might as well let ’im see the goods, eh?”
Sally took Molly’s hand and knocked on the door. There was the sound of approaching footsteps and the door opened.
Sally pulled Molly inside. “Look what I’ve brought,” she called brightly.
There were two people in the room, Molly realized. The one who had opened the door and the one seated on the bed. The man on the bed stared at Molly and ran his eye up and down her body. As the door closed he leered suggestively over her shoulder.
Molly turned.
“Hello, darlin’,” Lemuel Ragg said.
15
Apothecary Locke turned away from his window. “You know, I’ve never considered myself a foolish man.”
Hawkwood looked at him. “I don’t recall saying you were, Doctor.”
The apothecary dipped his head and peered at Hawkwood over the rim of his spectacles. “Then perhaps you should confide in me. I may be able to help you.”
“I’m not sure I understand you, Doctor.”
“Tell me what you’re doing here,” Locke said.
“You sent for me,” Hawkwood said. “Shouldn’t I be the one asking the questions?”
Locke raised his head. The youthfulness that Hawkwood had seen at the time of their first encounter had disappeared. There was weariness there now. The apothecary ran a hand along the edge of his desk.
“Forgive me, but on your previous visit I asked why you’d come. After all, with Colonel Hyde dead, surely the investigation was closed. You replied – somewhat curtly, as I recall – that it was for your report.” Locke smiled, almost shyly. “A logical reason, given that our first meeting was interrupted by the arrival of the constable summoning you away. You requested access to Colonel Hyde’s admission documents, and I was able to grant that. And yet, evidently, that was still not the end of it, for here we are again. I send you a message, a vague offer of information, and you arrive at my door within the hour.”
The apothecary lifted his hand and stared at the dust on the ends of his fingers, as if seeing it for the first time. Then he looked up. “I find that most curious. It leads me to believe that your investigation continues, despite Colonel Hyde’s demise. I’m wondering why that should be. I can think of only one explanation.” Leaning back against his desk, the apothecary took off his spectacles and misted the lenses with his breath. “You think Colonel Hyde is still alive, don’t you?”
The room was still. Locke reached into his sleeve and took out his handkerchief. He began to polish his spectacles vigorously.
“I don’t think Hyde’s still alive,” Hawkwood said. “I bloody know he is!” The words were out before he could stop them.
He’d expected an immediate gasp of astonishment from Locke, some show of surprise, but the apothecary’s expression remained curiously impassive. “How do you know?”
“The body in the church wasn’t Hyde’s. He made another substitution – dug up the body of a recently deceased man of similar age and build, and left it to burn in his place.”
“So the colonel must have known about the burial before he made his escape.” Locke spoke matter-of-factly.
Hawkwood nodded. “Reverend Tombs would have told him. Reverend Tombs would have told the colonel a lot of things, especially if the colonel asked the right questions.”
Which is what I should have been doing, Hawkwood thought.
Locke returned the handkerchief to his sleeve, placed his hands behind his back and began to pace the room. “So your subsequent visits here have been part of your effort to track him down?”
“Yes.”
“And what have you discovered?”
“I know he’s obtaining and dissecting dead bodies.”
Locke stopped pacing.
“Two cadavers were left outside Bart’s Hospital. Some of their insides had been removed. Parts of their skins had also been taken, including their faces.”
A nerve quivered in the apothecary’s cheek. He put his hands together as if about to pray and rested the tips of his fingers against his chin. Then he started pacing again. “Go on.”
“I know that all Colonel Hyde’s actions have had a purpose. His cultivation of the priest, the theft of the scalpel and the laudanum” – at this, Locke coloured – “the murder of Reverend Tombs, the escape, the digging up of the substitute corpse, the burning of the church to divert us from his scent, and now the mutilation of the women … I know it’s all part of some grand scheme. I just don’t know what that is.”
Locke said nothing. The silence stretched for several long seconds. Finally the apothecary moved to his desk. “Let me explain why I summoned you. I was in the colonel’s quarters and I discovered these –”
They were papers, Hawkwood saw, folded in two.
“I was gathering up the colonel’s effects,” Locke said, lifting one of the sheets and opening it out.
At first glance, it looked similar to the etchings Hawkwood had seen on the walls of the colonel’s room; a series of anatomical studies of the lower half of the torso and limbs, displayed in lifelike detail. And yet they were not the same. Hawkwood stared at the sketches. He knew his brain was telling him there was a difference but for the life of him, he couldn’t see what it was.
And then it came to him.
It was the legs. They were completely out of proportion. The thigh and calf muscles and the bones beneath the skin were clearly defined, but the limbs were too slender and elongated and it was the way they were displayed, with the thighs spread wide and the knees bent. It didn’t look natural. It looked bizarrely like the sort of pose a fencer would assume before executing a riposte, or a tumbler about to attempt a somersault. And then there was the torso, or at least what Hawkwood assumed was the torso, for it didn’t resemble anything that he’d ever seen before. In fact, it looked more like a sac of eggs. His eyes moved down. The anklebones looked too fragile to be able to bear even a modest weight and as for the feet, well, they were the oddest feature of all, each one impossibly long with the toes limp and obscenely splayed. In fact, if he didn’t know any better, they looked more like –
“Frogs,” Locke said.
“Frogs?” Hawkwood echoed, feeling immediately stupid. Of course, they were bloody frogs. What else could they have been? “Why frogs?”
“Many surgeons practise their early anatomy on the corpses of animals. Even schoolboys dissect frogs in school. Galen used to cut open apes. Eden Carslow once dissected an elephant.”
Why has he got me looking at bloody frogs? Hawkwood wondered. He stared again at the illustration. “What are these?”
The apothecary followed his finger.
Running from the muscles at the ends of the severed limbs were a series of wavy lines. The end of one of the lines was attached to whatever it was that looked like an egg sac. The other end was connected to some kind of wheel, complete with a winding handle.
“Fascinating, isn’t it?” The apothecary’s voice was a whisper.
“It might be if I knew what the devil it was,” Hawkwood said, though he had to admit the drawing was intriguing.
“I believe it to be an illustration of one of Galvani’s experiments. He was a
n Italian physician who believed that all animals possess a special electrical fluid that is generated in the brain and which passes through the nerves into the muscles. In order to prove his theory, he conducted a number of experiments with amphibians.” Locke tapped the etching with the end of his finger. “I believe that is what’s represented here.”
The apothecary indicated the lines. “I suspect these are the wires through which his fluid passes.” Locke shook his head in wonder before sliding the illustration to one side. “And then there are these.”
The second sheet contained a drawing of what looked like twelve sealed, jar-shaped containers, arranged in three rows of four. A thin tube protruded from the lid of each jar. The top of each tube was linked to the next one in line in each direction so that the jars appeared to be covered by a squared grille. The top half of each jar was transparent. The bottom half was either opaque or else the containers held some kind of liquid.
Hawkwood didn’t know why, but the illustration rang a faint bell.
“What’s this?”
“An electrical machine. Look, see, there’s more.” With excitement in his voice, Locke reached over and unfolded the third sheet. Smoothing it out, he laid it across the desk.
As soon as Locke mentioned the word “electrical”, Hawkwood knew why the drawing of the jars looked familiar. Electrical demonstrations had been a popular form of entertainment in some of the London theatres. Hawkwood had been in the audience at Astley’s when a black-cloaked master of ceremonies had exhorted several dozen giggling volunteers to form a circle and hold hands; he had then proceeded to send them into convulsions by the touch of a wire and several glass bottles. Hawkwood recalled that the women had been more susceptible to electrification than the men. He had no idea why. It hadn’t seemed to matter very much at the time. It had been an amusement, nothing more.
The third sheet made no sense at all. It showed what appeared to be a column of discs stacked one on top of the other, enclosed within four vertical retaining rods. At the base of the column was a basin-shaped container. The bottom disc was attached to the basin by what looked like a thin flow of liquid. The discs were arranged in pairs, each pair separated from the pair below by a smaller, darker-coloured disc. There were sixteen of the larger discs, making eight pairs in all. Each disc was marked by a letter; the upper disc in each pair carried the identification letter Z, the bottom disc the letter A.