He righted himself, and said, ‘I fear I may be the weakest link.’
I moved closer. ‘I daresay that honour will go to Mr Lecky.’
He hid a smile by pursing his lips, just as the band played the first long notes of the dance. Everyone in the room turned to bow and curtsy to their respective partners, and I could tell by Ewan’s eyes that he was amused at the formality.
When the first bars struck up, we rotated in a circle with linked hands like a carousel. Everyone moved with a simple skip, though Mrs Lecky insisted on kicking her heels and was in danger of striking Ewan’s shins. Her high steps caused her topaz necklace to jump and clack. I was surprised to see that Ewan moved elegantly, with an easy rhythm – his shoulders straight, but not in a stiff manner, and once or twice he glanced behind to see how I fared. When the rotation reversed, so that the ladies led, I concentrated on matching my steps to the music, counting the beats in my head, grateful that any slip would be hidden by my long gown. Clarissa and I had often practised these dances in our rooms; but I’d always played the part of the man. Other revolving sets of dancers skirted close by – a fast array of outfits and perfumes, and faces made red by the warmth of the crowd and the shifting light of the chandeliers.
The dance continued for several minutes and, as the music increased in tempo, the figures repeated again and again. Finally, the musicians played their coda. We halted to bow to each other once more, then applauded, and I felt pleased and relieved to be among the crowd, rather than watching from the sides. The dances were finished for the evening. The musicians continued playing more sedately, and the crowd lingered, for it would be bad form to leave with undue haste.
I was about to suggest to Ewan that we return to the window, but then I saw Liam at the door of the ballroom, incongruous in his plain livery. For a moment I couldn’t think of why he’d be there, but then an alarm crept over me. I hurried towards him, Ewan following behind, and I asked what was wrong.
‘Jimmy ran over to tell me,’ he said. ‘There’s been a break-in at the house – well, your father’s workrooms. He needs your help, Mr Weir.’
Liam said that he would fetch the horses, but our house was just around the corner, and he would need to bring Clarissa and Mrs Egan back home, so Ewan and I set off on foot. We hurried past the assembled coachmen, and must have looked for all the world like a couple eloping. The pavement felt cold beneath my dancing slippers, but it wasn’t long before we reached number four.
Mrs Perrin answered the door, wearing her sleeping cap and dressing gown and holding an oil-lamp aloft. ‘There you are,’ she said. ‘You needn’t worry, everything is fine.’ She clasped her nightgown closed beneath her chin. ‘It was only the body-snatchers.’
9
I was just a girl when we had our first visit from the resurrection men. A noise woke me in the dead of night, and from my window I could see shadowy figures in the yard, one holding a lantern aloft, another forcing the door of the coach house with an iron bar. I ran to my father’s room, and can still remember his sleep-scrunched face as I told him that there were men in the garden. He roused Ray Perrin, and their shouts and lamplight were enough to scare off the intruders.
Only one of them was caught, a boy of no more than twelve or thirteen. He was brought to the kitchen, and I peeked at him from the doorway. I expected him to appear sinister and threatening, perhaps older and more haggard than his years would suggest, but he was youthful and timid, any fight in him long gone. He sat beside Mr Perrin, and they drank from mugs of milk like father and son while waiting for the constables to arrive. Mrs Perrin was pregnant with Jimmy, and when she caught me lurking behind the door, she ordered me to bed.
There were other incidents over the years, though very rare. Bodies unencumbered by tombstones, packed earth and coffin lids must have been alluring for men of that profession, but they risked much more by trying to steal from the coroner. A corpse in the graveyard was not considered the property of anyone. But to trespass against an officer of the crown, and interfere with an ongoing inquest, could mean transportation to the colonies, or worse.
When Ewan and I arrived up to the workrooms in our finery, Father was standing in the front office. The floor was a mess: drawers in desks had been emptied out, chairs toppled over, Father’s tools strewn about. The door had been forced open, so the wood around the latch was splintered and the doorknob hung loose on its spindle. Father was replacing books that had been knocked from the shelves, but he had paused to read one opened in his palm, as if a certain passage had caught his interest.
He looked up as we entered, snapped the book closed and said that he was sorry for spoiling the evening. ‘Really, there was no need for you both to return. The damage is only superficial.’
I said, ‘No one was hurt?’
‘We didn’t even realize there were intruders until Jimmy spotted the stable door ajar.’ He placed the book back on its shelf and bent to pick up another. ‘They must have come searching for bodies, but when they found none they caused this damage from anger or spite.’
‘What about the dissecting room?’
‘They didn’t even attempt to open it.’
Ewan went over and twisted the handle, but the door was still locked.
‘Perhaps they didn’t know it was there,’ Father said. ‘Or maybe they were disturbed by something and fled. Either way, it could have been much worse. A bit of tidying, a new lock, and we shall be back to normal.’ He said that the police had been informed, but they thought it unlikely that anyone would be captured at this stage.
Father came over to me, his face set in a half-smile, and he told me not to worry. ‘These are hard times,’ he said. ‘Some men will do desperate things.’
Ewan began placing the tools back on the workbench: a bone-saw and rib-cutter, and a small hammer with a hook on its handle used for removing skullcaps, all made from polished copper.
On top of the examination table in the middle of the room there was an axe with a rusted blade, its dark wooden haft polished smooth from years of use.
I picked it up. ‘Where did this come from?’
‘They must have forgotten it,’ Father said. ‘At least the evening cost them something.’
The axe was so worn that its edge had become jagged, and small flecks of corroded metal were left on my white gloves.
Father said that he would have to see about securing the stable doors, and he went down to look at them. Ewan continued to rummage beneath papers on the floor. He found a small forceps and placed it on the table with the other tools.
‘Those instruments are worth more than any cadaver,’ I said.
‘Perhaps they didn’t realize.’
In the corner, the lock on the cabinet had been broken and the shutter pulled upwards. Ewan lifted it fully. The ledgers were still on their shelves, neatly arranged, though the most recent had been inserted upside-down.
I ran my fingers over the leather binding. ‘Would you have left it in like this?’
He shook his head. ‘Perhaps your father did,’ he said, but we both knew that was unlikely.
He took the ledger down and opened it. I half expected to see the final pages torn out, but Father’s notes on Emilie Casey were intact.
I looked at the room again, the upturned furniture and scattered pages, and the axe on the worktable. The ledgers containing Father’s notes were the only items completely undamaged. That was what they had come for.
‘Could it have been the man that I followed from the Neshams’ house, the man with the lazy eye?’
Ewan closed the book and placed it back on the shelf. ‘Why would it be?’
‘I told him that Father knew about him, that he possessed information about Miss Casey’s death not revealed at inquest.’
‘He would not break in here just to verify that.’
‘He might if he thought that he was at risk. Who else would bring an axe to a burglary and leave a locked door untouched?’
‘There is nothing
to suggest that it was him. And even so, these notes would say that Mr Lawless knew nothing about him.’
I was about to speak again, but Father had returned, and he was regarding us from the doorway. ‘Is everything all right?’
Ewan showed him the broken lock on the shutter, and gave it a loose rattle. ‘They opened the cabinet,’ he said. ‘But obviously found nothing of value.’
Liam returned a little later. He fixed a new bolt to the stable door, but was still concerned that the workrooms were insecure, so Ewan volunteered to sleep there during the night. Mrs Perrin brought him some blankets and warm milk, and he propped himself between two wooden chairs. I pointed out that the coroner’s table was still available, but he didn’t think that would be conducive to pleasant dreams.
It took longer than expected to survey the damage, tidy the room and make an inventory of all the files, and the following night Father asked Mrs Perrin to make up one of the spare rooms so that Ewan could sleep more comfortably. A new lock was fitted, and a full report sent to the constables on Sackville Street, but there was little expectation of anyone being held responsible.
Father found me in the library the next morning, and pulled out a chair to sit beside me.
‘What are you reading?’
‘Just a novel.’
‘Oh,’ he said, a bit deflated. Kepler was lounging on the table, and Father scratched behind his ears. Kepler submitted for a few moments before arching his neck to bare his teeth.
‘Mrs Perrin came to speak with me,’ Father said. ‘She is a bit concerned following the break-in. She frets about what might happen if the house were targeted, for I am getting a little old, and Jimmy is far too young.’ He curled his little finger and swept some cat hair from the table-top. ‘She thought perhaps that Mr Weir could lodge here for a while.’
I closed my book, and said, ‘For how long?’
‘Well, we could see. Perhaps until his term begins again in the autumn.’
‘What does he think?’
‘He seemed to be happy with the idea. His current rooms are not the most salubrious.’
‘Yes, I know.’ Father frowned, and I said that Mr Weir had once described them to me.
I was hesitant at first, even averse to the idea. I’d always considered the house to be my own domain. I could slip to the kitchen barefoot in my nightdress for a cup of water, or lie sprawled on the sofa with a book, or traipse in from the garden with mud on my petticoats and my hair undone. I disliked the idea of forever being wary of encounters, having to listen out for knocks on doors or throats being cleared. But perhaps these were the selfish vestiges of being an only child. I pictured having conversations with Ewan in the firelit parlour, and found the thought to be a pleasant one.
He arrived the following day with his trunk and satchel, and took possession of the spare room that was already prepared. It was on the same floor as mine, though on the other side of the house. Still, for those first nights I fancied I could hear him move about, a floorboard creaking, or the door of the wardrobe closing. I saw little of him. He studied in the morning, then took a quick breakfast before retreating to the workrooms for most of the day. He would join Father and me for supper, but he had often done that before, and so there was little novelty. Perhaps he was conscious of intruding, for even though Father would invite him to the parlour each evening, he would only stay a short while before retiring.
On the first Saturday, I saw Kathy and Jimmy take kettles of hot water to the iron tub on the third floor. I was in the landing when Ewan passed in his shirtsleeves and braces, a dry towel tucked under his arm. He bid me a good morning, and we agreed that the weather was very fine. I took a book to read in my room, but could still hear the slap and burble of water from the floor above, and perhaps, at the edge of hearing, a tuneful humming. It was rather distracting, so I decided to go down to the parlour instead.
At the end of the hall, the door to Ewan’s room was ajar. The sheets on the bed were still in a tangle, and there was a faint musty smell, which reminded me of the times Clarissa and I would sneak into the rooms of her brothers, before they moved to London. A satchel hung from the back of a chair next to a desk, where a journal was laid out beside an inkpot and quill, its front cover lying open.
He must have been keeping it since he arrived in Dublin, for the first page was headed with the date from six months ago.
The crossing from Liverpool was brief, but one I won’t soon forget. Our postal packet was tossed by a gale right against us, and I couldn’t keep the lamp lit in my shifting cabin. All I could do was brace myself against the bunk and wait for us to limp into Dublin. First impressions of my new home were not at all favourable. It lacks the aspects of Edinburgh, and the grandeur of London, though its cabmen are just as surly and prone to overcharge. Mine dumped me at the door of my new employer, and was away in a clatter of hooves, leaving me to drag my trunk up the steps by myself The door was answered by a willowy girl with dark eyes, pretty after a fashion, who I assumed to be a parlourmaid. It turned out she was the daughter of the house, and since our first meeting I’ve found her to be . . .
After a fashion? Here the page had ended, and I gripped the corner to turn the leaf, but then stopped myself. This was unfair to Ewan. He had every right to jot down his personal thoughts and expect them to remain private. Still, it was odd to see myself appear in a piece of writing like a character in a book. I could remember opening the door to Ewan – the brim of his hat was drooping, and he held the handle of his trunk so that it tilted against his legs. He’d appeared to me then to be rather brusque, but perhaps that was explained by his trying journey.
What was it about me that he was going to describe, though? A door banged shut in the hall below, and I hurriedly left the journal and stepped out of the room. Perhaps it was best not to know.
At first I almost missed it, the sign on Abbey Street for Elyan the horologist. It was just his name and an hourglass engraved on a brass plaque, which was attached to some rusting iron railings. His shop was on the basement level beneath a well-lit cutler’s, down narrow granite steps where bits of litter and old newspaper had fallen from the street above. The front door was locked, so I tugged on the tassel of a bell-rope. A moment later, there was a clunk as the bolt was undone, and the door swung inwards silently. There was no one on the other side. When I entered, a lead weight beside the door began to descend, which caused a hinged metal arm to push the door closed again.
The bustle of the street was replaced by an incessant and arrhythmic ticking. There was no handle or latch on the inside, and if I wanted to leave, the same mechanism, whatever it was, would have to be used. The shop room was cramped. Bays of shelving and tall cabinets contained mantel clocks with casings of gilded metal and alabaster. Bracket clocks were affixed to the wall, and grandfathers stood in each corner, their faces adorned with numerals and astrological figures, slender lances and spades.
Behind the counter, a man sat at a table in a pool of candlelight, his back to the shop as if the contents were of no concern. He turned about to look at me, peering through spectacles with additional hinged lenses attached to the frame. He was younger than I expected, with a beard that was thick around the chin, more wispy the closer it came to his ears.
‘Mr Elyan?’
He said that he would be with me in a moment, before returning his attention to a pocket watch, its intricate innards exposed and glinting.
I wandered about the shop floor, and stopped at a shelf with a tortoise-shell box. When I lifted the lid, pieces of metal rose from within like shapes in a fold-out book, forming a hummingbird in its nest. Its head tilted about, and a tiny bellows caused the bird to chirp and trill. At the bottom of the nest there was an egg, which began to tremble as if about to hatch. The hummingbird lowered its long beak towards it, but as the mechanism wound down, the egg became still. Its mother’s song ended, and she stayed leaning over it as the lid closed by itself, folding everything back into the box.
&nbs
p; Mr Elyan had come to stand by my shoulder. ‘There are other designs, if you would like to see?’
‘No, thank you, I was just browsing.’ Before he could step away again, I said, ‘How did you open the door?’
‘There is a lever by my table. A simple mechanism of springs and pulleys.’
‘There’s no handle on the inside.’
‘No.’
‘So how does one leave?’
‘I let you out.’ He took up the tortoise-shell box and wound its key, then replaced it without lifting the lid. ‘But were you not looking for something, a timepiece perhaps?’
‘I happened to see one of your devices recently at Charlemont House.’
He smiled at the mention of the name. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘The Draughtsman.’
I withdrew the spoiled portrait from my coat and showed it to him. He squinted at it for a moment, then took the sheet from me and held it up. The nails of his thumb and forefinger had been grown long and filed into points. He glanced at me over the edge of the page. ‘What has happened to it?’
‘The boy, I mean the machine, did that by itself.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not by itself.’ He brought the sheet back to the counter and placed it under a candle. He frowned while running his fingers along the scratched-out cross and the faint letters at the bottom of the page. ‘Did many people see this happen?’
‘A small crowd had been watching, though Lord Charlemont switched it off before the verse was written out. He seemed to think that it was malfunctioning.’
Elyan shook his head and tensed his fingers, as if he meant to crumple the sheet.
‘I take it you didn’t design it like this.’
‘I was hoping to get commissions from being displayed in such surroundings. Who would want one now?’ He held the page against the light to read the verse, but his expression remained unchanged. He didn’t seem to recognize it, but neither was he surprised to see it there.
I said, ‘Would it not require a special skill to tamper with it like this?’
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