Grave Expectations

by Heather Redmond

  Charles forced his memories back to the morning he’d discovered Miss Haverstock. Nothing had seemed out of place around the fireplace. Had Osvald Larsen assumed some particular item would be found among her possessions that had not?

  After removing the grate, Charles stepped into the fireplace in a crouch. Chunks of mortar crunched under his feet. Within seconds his fingers were dark with soot as he poked and prodded. A disgusting taste coated the back of his throat. “A future as a chimney sweep, I have not,” he muttered.

  He spent twenty minutes searching the bricks on the damaged side, poking his trowel into the mortar, but did not find any signs of secret compartments. Then he quickly swept eyes and fingers over the back of the fireplace, though it was an odd place for a hidden compartment. Finally, he tackled the right side.

  In exactly the same spot where, on the opposite side, Larsen had pulled away bricks, he found a brick that wiggled. He pushed hard. It didn’t move back. After wrapping his hands around it, he attempted to shift the rough surface. The brick moved about an inch. He tightened his grip and put his entire body into it.

  Behind him, he heard a door open but didn’t cease in his attempt to shift the brick. “I may have discovered the right spot,” he called. “Did Lord Lugoson find a good horse?”

  “The dead never stay dead,” said the voice of an older man, with a whisper of an accent. “They keep haunting you.”

  Chapter 23

  As Charles jerked his head around, the brick came away with him. He toppled against the other side of the fireplace, shoes skittering on the broken bits of mortar. His palms went damp with sweat. Why hadn’t he waited for the Agas? Mr. Ferazzi would toss him and Fred out on their ears.

  But instead of ordering him out, Mr. Ferazzi spoke as if Charles was one of his employees.

  “Did you find the papers?” the old man asked. “Every last remnant of her must be erased.”

  “Why?” Charles asked, not knowing if Mr. Ferazzi recognized him. The old man looked drugged, his eyes hazy. “Is Mr. Nickerson with you?”

  “She destroys my dreams.” The landlord clutched at the knot at the front of his cheap black neckerchief as if it was choking him.

  Charles tried to right himself, but he went down on one knee before he regained control. The knee of his trousers tore. Was the man superstitious? Was he afraid Miss Haverstock would haunt these chambers if anything of her remained?

  “I’m sorry I came in here. I know Mr. Nickerson didn’t want me upstairs. Can I take you home?” Maybe he could remove the old man and then go back in later.

  The landlord didn’t look at him, just continued worrying at the knot at his neck. “Goldy tortured me. I had to end it.”

  “Goldy?” Charles asked, rising to his feet. He brushed at his knees. “Who was Goldy?”

  Mr. Ferazzi blinked at his question as if he hadn’t noticed before that an actual person was in the room with him.

  “Miss Haverstock died here, not Goldy.” Charles climbed out of the fireplace, holding the brick still. He added it to the neat pile.

  The landlord ripped away his neckcloth. “Don’t confuse me.”

  Charles could see long red streaks on the man’s neck. Scratches. His pupils were tiny in the limited light. He looked like an opium eater. Was he having hallucinations? “Who was Goldy?”

  “A survivor,” whispered the old man. He swayed.

  “The only Goldy I know of died as a child. But she died in the river. I read the article about it. Were you the person who put it under my door?” Maybe he would finally get to the bottom of that mystery.

  “No.”

  Charles frowned, not liking the sound of that. Unease prickled at him. Maybe he should have kept the brick in his hand. He touched his pocket where his trowel rested. “I wonder who wanted me to know about Goldy’s death. You had a part in that, didn’t you? You were the leader of her mudlark gang all those years ago?”

  “She survived,” Mr. Ferazzi said in a hollow voice. “Then she lived.”

  A connection formed in Charles’s brain. “Are you saying Goldy became Miss Haverstock?”

  The old man nodded. “We called her Goldy because her father was rich.”

  So Rebecca Adams had been Goldy all along. Charles kept a light note in his voice. “Then she can’t be haunting you now. She’s buried. Er, somewhere.” He hadn’t thought to ask where, much less visit her grave.

  Mr. Ferazzi clutched at his head. “She still has a hold on me.”

  Charles’s reporter’s instincts snapped into place. He had in front of him a man who wanted to tell a story. “Start at the beginning, please.”

  The man’s lips curved under his mustache, but no hint of warmth reached his eyes. “None of our parents ever knew what had happened on the river.” The man winced. He pulled a little black vial from his pocket and drank down the contents. Laudanum.

  “Did you help free her?”

  “No, we all left her to her fate. Goldy reappeared the next day.”

  Charles opened his mouth when Mr. Ferazzi paused, but then his fingers opened and dropped the vial on the floor, and the noise seemed to rouse him again. He continued. “Years later, our parents promised Goldy to me. An arranged marriage. She was a beauty then, black hair, fiery eyes. Her personality softened some as she grew into womanhood. I thought she had forgotten.”

  Charles’s brain snapped onto one piece of that narrative. “You’re Jewish?”

  “Yes. Italy has rarely been a good place for my people. My father moved us here from the ghetto in Ferrara when I was a child.”

  Charles glanced out the window, wishing he’d see his friends in the lane, but he seemed to be on his own. Without knowing what Mr. Ferazzi wanted, and given that he was blocking the door, Charles continued the conversation. “I take it that Goldy didn’t want to marry you.”

  A growl emerged from Mr. Ferazzi’s throat. “She would have, but Elijah Haverstock stole her away with his wealth.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Mr. Ferazzi bared his teeth. “He paid for it, for taking her away from all of us, stealing her from her family and heritage.”

  “She married Mr. Haverstock. Was she afraid of you?”

  “She had no reason to fear me, unlike her husband. I admit she had suffered that day, would have drowned if she hadn’t been picked up by a ferry, but—” He shrugged as if he hadn’t been responsible.

  “You went on as if nothing had happened,” Charles pointed out.

  Mr. Ferrazi’s lips peeled away from his teeth, an involuntary grimace. “I made it my life’s work to ruin the Haverstocks. Anyone connected to that family.”

  “You never married? You let revenge blacken your soul.”

  His eyes glowed hollowly when he lifted his head. “The Haverstocks took in my bride, treated her like a daughter as she made arrangements to join the Church of England. I never spoke to her after she left her parents’ home, but I was the specter in the corners of her life.”

  “You hired your old friend Osvald to kill her all these years later?”

  The landlord spoke as if to himself. “I am not such a hard man. I found her again after she was widowed and offered her a home in one of my buildings.”

  Charles frowned. Mr. Ferazzi had been watching her all those years, waiting for the opportunity to offer his twisted love again. “Why did she need that? She seems to have had a great deal of money.”

  “Property, not money, by then. She wanted to keep all the Haverstock possessions for Miss Jaggers’s benefit. She adored that pretty, spoiled girl. She had no children of her own. None that lived.”

  “You told me at the inquest that you didn’t know the girl.”

  “I knew of her. She was a Haverstock connection.”

  “You wanted to court Goldy? After all this time?”

  “She continued to haunt me. I wanted her forgiveness. My lust to destroy the Haverstocks wavered once most of them were gone.”

  “What happened that night?” Char
les asked softly, trying to be the voice of conscience in the man’s mind, rather than another person talking.

  “I suggested we wed. She excused herself for a time. When she came back, she was wearing that old dress, the one she’d married Haverstock in. She insisted I look at her, told me we were both decayed, like that dress, and I had no business talking about wedlock.” Mr. Ferazzi rubbed his eyes with the back of his sleeve.

  “What did you say to that?”

  “That she was still beautiful, still mine.” He paused. “I was holding her arm. She wrenched it away. She turned. Her spittle hit my eye when she said she was never mine. We’d been about to open a bottle of wine. The corkscrew was in my hand.”

  Charles pressed his lips together tightly as bile rose from his belly. He knew she’d been strangled first, but now he knew Mr. Ferazzi was Miss Haverstock’s killer, not Osvald Larsen.

  The landlord passed his hand over his eyes. “It was in my hand, then—” His fingers shook hard as he gestured. He folded his arms across his chest. “I slammed it into the wall. I hurt her.”

  Charles took stealthy steps, trying to get between the door and the evil old man.

  But Mr. Ferazzi’s gaze tracked him, and a little smile edged around the corners of his mouth. Charles stopped moving. He noticed how long the man’s fingers were, and wondered what it had taken for him to choke the life from Miss Haverstock.

  His voice trembled as he spoke. “Why don’t we go for a walk? It’s stuffy in here. You’ll be able to think more clearly.” Could he lead the man to the Chelsea Police Station, or at least to a constable on the beat?

  “I hate this building,” Mr. Ferazzi said, his hand dropping to his side. “I should sell it, but the rents are excellent.”

  Charles took another step, his back brushing along the wall, hoping to herd him out the door. “Don’t you still smell her here?” he asked. “I do.”

  The man shuddered and took a step backward.

  Charles moved again, an agonizing step closer to the door. He had to get this murderer to the police. “It must torment you, being in the room where you made such a desperate move.”

  Mr. Ferazzi’s fingers went to his temples. “It happened so fast.”

  “Your mind will be clearer somewhere else,” Charles said soothingly. “The brick dust is heavy here. Let’s go downstairs.”

  “I might feel better,” the man said tentatively. He coughed.

  Charles’s heart pounded in his chest, but he took the steps, anyway, ignoring his fear that the man might attack. He was young, after all, and a match for this madman, unlike poor, dotty old Miss Haverstock. He set his fingertips on the man’s sleeve and gently pulled him through the door and to the stairs. The old man went with him down to the main door of the building.

  Charles felt faint with relief when they reached the walkway outside. The cool air felt blissful on his cheeks after he’d breathed in old mortar and brick dust. He led Mr. Ferazzi south, planning to turn off onto the network of roads leading to the police station, but after a block or two, the man’s agitation returned. He pulled away from Charles’s gentle hand on his sleeve and began to touch his face, his mustache. His nails scratched his cheeks.

  “I need to go home,” he muttered.

  “Home?” Charles said. “But you haven’t been staying there.”

  The landlord’s head snapped in Charles’s direction. “What do you mean? Have you been following me? Who are you?”

  “I’m your tenant,” Charles said patiently, patting his arm. “I passed by your house one night while looking for a friend.”

  Mr. Ferazzi wrenched away from him with far more force than was needed. Then with one leg lifted high and his knee bent, the man took off at a run, to Charles’s shock, belying his age and his drugged state as he bolted in a southward direction, rather than toward the police station.

  Charles raced after him, thinking he was heading toward his house, but instead of veering off eastward toward the Royal Hospital, he kept heading toward the river.

  Chapter 24

  “Mr. Ferazzi!” Charles shouted, chasing his quarry past a pub. He couldn’t let the man out of his sight. Murderer or not, in his deranged state, he might harm himself. Closing in, Charles reached his hand out but just missed the man’s shoulder. Focused on grabbing, he didn’t mind his feet. His arms windmilled as he lost his balance, his feet slipping, but he stayed on his feet.

  Charles stalled to scrape old potato peelings from his shoe, using a sharp chunk of rock. His knee gave a twinge of pain when he moved it. But the Italian kept running, and no constable appeared.

  Frustrated, Charles retraced his steps, opened the pub door, and waved until he caught the eye of the man behind the bar. “Summon a constable!” he called, then reversed and continued to follow in Mr. Ferazzi’s footsteps.

  Down the street, the landlord’s feet flew past an array of artisans’ cottages. Charles followed him down the quiet, darkening street, wincing each time he put his weight on his knee. Seagulls circled overhead as the sluggish brown river came into view beyond the tangle of trees and vegetation. The scent of raw sewage assaulted his nostrils.

  Charles shouted again. The Italian didn’t look back. “What are you doing?” he yelled.

  Mr. Ferazzi didn’t pause at the end of the street, merely leapt over a bush and disappeared.

  Charles reached the bush and paused, massaging his knee, then slowly made his way across the uneven surface of the vegetation-covered dirt beyond the bush. A few feet later, he could see the rocky foreshore below a rickety staircase next to an abandoned building that had probably been an unsuccessful pub.

  His mouth dropped open as Mr. Ferazzi waded into the sunset-dappled but filthy water, the tide so high that little of the foreshore was evident. The mudlarks and other riverside dwellers had not yet come out.

  He kicked at the dirt with his good leg. “I’ll stop chasing you,” he shouted at Mr. Ferazzi. “You’ll make yourself ill. Come out of there!”

  The Italian didn’t look back. At first, Charles could see his knees pumping as he lifted them, wading, then walking. Soon the water was waist high on him.

  “Stop,” Charles cried, holding what was left of the bannister as he stumbled down the stairs. A splinter bit into his palm, and he yelped but kept moving. He hurtled over a missing riser at the bottom of the stairs and came down hard on his bad knee. Gasping past the pain and limping, he made his way over the foreshore and stopped at the water’s edge.

  The smell of the river was indescribable, even to a newspaperman. At his feet, the water lapped at his shoes, which were already stained with water. A dead bird floating in the water touched the leather at his toes. He jumped back, hoping he wouldn’t see a human corpse next.

  Behind him, he heard a yell as he waved his arms in the direction of Mr. Ferazzi. What was the landlord trying to accomplish? Was he trying to mimic Goldy’s experience?

  Giving up on the man hearing him, as he was already out in midstream, the water up past his abdomen, Charles ran down the foreshore, ignoring the voices behind him. He tripped over a derelict boat but then found a rowboat at the water’s edge, probably left there while the owners went up the waterside stairs to dinner.

  He pushed the boat toward the water, thinking to rescue Mr. Ferazzi himself. The man had gone mad, utterly mad. No one responsible for their actions would run into the filthy river. But behind him, shouts rang out again, and he heard the telltale rattle of a constable. Not wanting to be arrested as a thief, he stopped short of climbing into the rowboat.

  He focused back on the river, squinting his eyes. When he found Mr. Ferazzi again, he was only a head. His mustache had gone flat with dampness. Mr. Ferazzi sank into the water. Charles held his breath, waiting for the man to bob up. But he didn’t. He didn’t come up again.

  When Charles put his hand to his cheek, the splinter in his palm speared his tender flesh. He yelped and worried at the splinter with his teeth and waited for the uniformed constab
le to make his awkward way down the stairs.

  * * *

  Long after dark, Charles sat in a room in the Chelsea Police Station. Sir Silas and Constable Blight had questioned him, conferred outside, then come in again to continue with him. Constables had gone door-to-door down the street and had found a couple of artists who had been drinking on their roof and insisted that Charles had never touched the man, merely chased him.

  “At least we finally know who killed Miss Haverstock,” Sir Silas said.

  The door to the room opened. “We’ve found Reggie Nickerson,” the sergeant said.

  “Bring him in,” said the coroner, rising to his feet.

  Charles stayed where he was. His knee had swelled, and he was bone tired, as if he’d escaped from the river himself.

  Reggie Nickerson swaggered in. He’d tied up his oversize neckerchief until it thrust his chin high above his neck. The coat he’d donned was oversize, too, almost as if it wasn’t his. “Wot’s all this?” he asked. “Me missus might think as if I’ve done somefink wrong, being dragged out at all hours.”

  “Have a seat,” Sir Silas said calmly.

  Charles pushed out the chair next to him.

  “Well, I’ll be blowed,” Mr. Nickerson exclaimed. “If it isn’t that reporter fellow.”

  Charles looked up at Sir Silas, not sure why he hadn’t yet been dismissed.

  “Your employer has died,” Sir Silas said calmly.

  The factotum cupped his hand around his ear. “I can’t be ’earing you proper, sir. Wot’s all this?”

  “Mr. Ferazzi killed himself in front of witnesses,” chimed in Constable Blight.

  Mr. Nickerson’s lower face slowly elongated, his mouth falling open as the truth sank in.

  “There will be an inquest,” the coroner said. “But for right now, I want to know who is to take over the businesses.”

  “I’m ’is right-’and man,” said Mr. Nickerson, uncharacteristically slowly. “I know it all best.”

  “Do you know who his heir is?” Sir Silas lifted his fingers above the desk as if to rap out a beat, but then settled them back down again.