by Mark Morris
‘It is,’ I said, and paused, to give him the impression I was deciding whether or not I could trust him. Eventually I said, ‘The fact is, I’m looking for something. Something I want no one else to know about. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
I jangled the coins in my pocket again. Hayles nodded eagerly.
‘I do, sir. You think I might have this… something you is looking for?’
‘I think you might be well placed to find it for me. Or at least, to receive information as to its whereabouts. If that were the case I would expect you to tell me – me and no one else – immediately. Do you think you could do that?’
Hayles was still nodding. Above us the crow had settled again, its clawed toes gripping the ornately carved pediment of a mahogany wardrobe. It let out a single caw, as though sounding a note of caution.
‘Oh, I think I can, sir. Yes, I surely do.’ Once more the old man eyed my pocket. ‘And… er… in return for providing this exclusive service, sir?’
‘You would be paid handsomely. Very handsomely indeed if you find the item I’m after.’
Hayles flushed with excitement. He blinked rapidly and for the second time wet his lips with his tongue. ‘May I be permitted to ask what the “item” is, sir?’
I glanced at Hawkins. He looked back at me steadily.
‘It’s a small human heart, about this size –’ I showed him using my thumb and forefinger ‘– carved from obsidian.’ I paused to gauge his reaction. If he had heard of the heart he gave no sign. ‘You know what obsidian is?’
‘It’s a stone, sir, is it not?’
‘It’s a black rock.’
Hayles nodded hard, as if to convince me I’d come to the right man.
‘Ah yes, sir. A black rock. I knows exactly what you mean.’
I doubted that, but it didn’t matter. There can’t be too many black stone hearts knocking around.
‘So do I have your word, Mr Hayles, that if you receive any information pertaining to this item – or, indeed, if the item itself should come into your possession – you’ll inform me immediately?’
Hayles nodded solemnly, his gaze sliding to my pocket again.
‘You do and I will, sir.’
I took my hand out of my pocket.
He looked alarmed. ‘Shall we shake on it, sir?’ he asked hastily.
I smiled. ‘In a moment. I thought I would pay you first. To cement your loyalty, as it were.’
I wondered if he would make a show of saying that immediate payment wasn’t necessary, but he was clearly too desperate, too afraid I might take him at his word.
‘Well, sir,’ he mumbled, ‘that’s mighty generous of you, I’m sure.’
‘And of course, you’ll need to know how to contact me, should the need arise.’
He laughed nervously. ‘You are right, sir. I was quite forgetting myself. My poor old brain must be addled by the excitement of our new business partnership.’
‘Yes,’ I said, reaching into the inside pocket of my overcoat. ‘It must be.’
The way Hayles’s eyes flickered once more into beady life and fastened on my wallet was almost like a physical sensation. I half expected to feel the wallet plucked from my hand by telekinesis; either that or Hayles would click his tongue and Satan would swoop down and snatch it from me.
Neither of those things happened, of course. I took three large white notes from my wallet – a ten and two fives – and a business card with my name and address on it. I expected Hayles to grab them from my hand, but he extricated them almost reverently, which reminded me of what he had said about Satan taking tit-bits from the fingers of local children. I glanced at the crow, still perched on top of the wardrobe, its head tilted as if observing the exchange with interest, its round eyes flashing like yellow gemstones in the gloom.
Twenty pounds wasn’t a fortune – the average London labourer earned around a pound a week, maybe more – but it may have been the most money that a man like Hayles had ever earned in one go before. He gawped at the notes in disbelief, then raised them to his face with trembling hands to sniff them. Finally he rolled them deftly into a tube and concealed them somewhere within the ragged folds of his black clothing.
‘That’s what we call a down payment, Mr Hayles,’ I said. ‘I give you that money in the hope that you will serve me well and faithfully.’
‘Oh, I will, sir,’ Hayles replied, dipping his head and touching his forelock. ‘You can count on that. I am a man of my word.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ I said, and extended my hand. ‘Let’s shake on it, as you suggested.’
He eyed my hand warily, as if afraid I might have a mousetrap concealed in my palm, then tugged the fingerless glove off his own right hand and stretched out his arm. I clasped his dirt-ingrained hand in my cleaner one, expecting his skin to be dry and cool like a snake’s, but finding instead that it was warm and damp, perhaps with nerves. He gave my hand a perfunctory shake and tried to release it, but I held on for a moment, fractionally tightening my grip.
‘A word of friendly warning before we depart, Mr Hayles,’ I said. ‘Not for my sake, but your own.’ I smiled, but my voice was as cold and precise as I could make it. ‘Please remember what I have said. It is imperative that you speak to no one about me, about the item I’m seeking, or about the deal that we’ve struck today. There may be others seeking the heart, and if they find out that you are helping me, they will show no mercy. Do you understand?’
Hayles swallowed. The gulp was loud in the dust-filled room.
‘I do, sir.’
‘Excellent.’ I released his hand and stepped back towards the door. ‘Then our business for now is concluded. We’ll bid you a very good day.’
TEN
TO THE BONE
‘What do you mean, she’s gone to the theatre?’
It was barely noon, but the day had darkened so much it felt like dusk. Just when it seemed a thaw might be on the way, the air had turned even colder and new flakes of snow had begun to drift from the leaden sky. Hawkins and I arrived back at the house shivering and stamping our boots. I’d been looking forward to a bowl of soup and perhaps an afternoon snooze before dinner with the Sherwoods – but Hope’s news had scuppered those plans.
She’d been playing with her doll’s house in her room when I’d stuck my head round the door. She and her new toy had been inseparable since she’d unwrapped it on Christmas Day. She was so engrossed in her game she didn’t notice me enter. I watched her for thirty seconds or so with a mixture of affection and concern. The way she played with the little wooden figures, creating individual voices for each character, I found so touching that tears welled in my eyes. A couple of months ago she’d have been incapable of this. Creative play would have been incomprehensible to her. She’d come on in leaps and bounds since then, but I was still reluctant to allow her to take that extra step of mixing with other children. It wasn’t that I didn’t think Hope wouldn’t behave herself or know how to handle the situation; it was that I didn’t trust other kids to accept her as we did. I didn’t want her to be made fun of, or to be made to feel like a freak because of her mechanical arm. I didn’t want her to feel she was something to be gossiped about, or feared, or stared at.
Eventually I cleared my throat, and she looked up. In the flat, dead light of the increasingly gloomy day her face looked grey and lifeless, her eyes a washed-out blue set deep in the hollows of their sockets. For a shocking instant I got the impression her skin had become translucent, that I could see the skull beneath it. I forced a smile.
‘Having fun?’
She nodded and grinned, which, rather than dispelling the notion, made her face look even more skull-like.
Trying to push away the image, I sat on the bed and we chatted for a while. Just general stuff: how she was feeling, how she’d slept, what she’d been doing today. I asked her where Clover was, and felt my stomach clench when Hope told me she’d gone to the theatre. More sharply than I meant to, I asked h
er what she meant.
‘What’s the matter, Alex?’ she asked in alarm, as if she felt she’d done something wrong.
I put a hand on her head to reassure her. Her hair felt damp, the skull beneath it radiating heat.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Sorry. I’m just… surprised, that’s all.’
* * *
Ten minutes later Hawkins and I were again trundling through the snowy London streets in a hansom. It turned out a messenger boy had arrived forty minutes earlier, with a note from Horace Lacey saying that he wanted to see us as soon as possible.
The note had been waiting for us on the hall table when we’d come in, but I’d missed it. It was pinned beneath a glass paperweight, along with a scrawled note from Clover: Thought I’d better pop along. See you there! Once Mrs Peake had drawn Lacey’s note to my attention, I compared it to the earlier one we’d received from the theatre manager. The handwriting was the same, but whereas the language in the first note was flamboyant, this second one was concise, even terse:
Dear Mr Locke
Please attend to me at the Maybury Theatre at your earliest convenience.
I have urgent news to impart.
Yours
Horace Lacey
‘What do you think?’ I’d asked Hawkins as we were waiting for the cab.
Hawkins had peered at the note as intently as if he was willing a hidden message to reveal itself beneath the one on the paper.
‘In my opinion this was written in haste, sir. Perhaps in a state of excitement.’
‘Or fear?’
Hawkins’ steely grey eyes regarded me. I could imagine him wearing that same unflappable expression as he prepared to perform death-defying stunts with the Flying Bencziks every night. ‘Possibly.’
Despite my anxiety, the rocking of the cab and the shushing of the wheels through the snowy streets lulled me to sleep. I was so exhausted it was like being anaesthetised. For a good thirty seconds after Hawkins shook me awake I had no idea where I was.
‘We’re here, sir,’ he said as I blinked in confusion.
‘Where?’
‘The Maybury Theatre.’
I peered out of the cab window, but all I could see was a fresh layer of snow on the glass. As my senses returned I realised I could hear snow pattering on the roof above us.
‘Is it night?’ I asked.
‘Early afternoon, sir,’ replied Hawkins, pushing the door open. ‘The weather is closing in again, I fear.’
He wasn’t wrong. But at least the cold air and swirling snow helped blow the cobwebs away. Asking the cab driver to wait (he peered at us mournfully from beneath the brim of a hat topped with an inch-thick layer of snow), we ran up the snowy steps to the main doors.
‘Should we knock, sir?’ asked Hawkins, raising his cane.
Noting that the doors weren’t quite flush with one another, I leaned my weight against the left-hand one and it opened immediately.
‘No need.’
‘Perhaps Miss Clover left it open to allow us easy access?’
‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘Though in my time we’d call that a best-case scenario.’
Despite my fluttering stomach, there was no immediate sign that anything bad had happened. The lobby with its threadbare carpet and wide steps looked the same as it had the last time I’d been here. What was perhaps odd was that there was no sound coming from the auditorium. Shouldn’t the Guiding Light Players be rehearsing? Wasn’t their play due to start in a week or so? Then again, maybe this was their lunch break. Or maybe today’s rehearsal had been postponed due to the snow.
There was no reason why we shouldn’t have called out in the hope of attracting attention, but I was cautious. There was something not right about that note. If Lacey had written it out of fear – if he’d thought himself in danger, for instance – wouldn’t he have vacated the premises, even jumped in a cab and come to see us rather than sitting tight and waiting for us to go to him? And if the situation wasn’t urgent, why had his note been so curt? He was an obsequious man, he liked to make a good impression – so why had he dispensed with the sycophantic language he’d used previously?
‘Let’s take it slowly and quietly,’ I murmured to Hawkins, and pointed to the left-hand turning at the top of the wide steps. ‘We’ll go round the outside of the auditorium to the back, check out the dressing rooms and the yard.’
‘Understood, sir.’
I drew my howdah and led the way. I’d feel a fool if it turned out I was overreacting, and ended up scaring Lacey half to death, but better that than be caught unawares.
I ascended the stairs and edged through the arched opening. Only around half the wall lamps were lit along the curved corridor ahead, presumably to save money, which meant the interior of the theatre was gloomy. Patches of darkness quivered between the evenly spaced oases of light cast by the flickering gas flames. Most of the doors lining the left-hand wall were murky rectangles, whereas the openings on the right, leading into the main auditorium, resembled gaping black mouths.
I stopped at the first of these and peered through. The auditorium was dark and utterly silent. The stage at the far end was not visible at all. All I could see of the interior were the vague, shadowy outlines of seats in the two or three rows closest to where I was standing. I was aware that anything could be lurking in that darkness, no more than a few metres away, and I wouldn’t be aware of it until it moved or made a sound. Gripping the howdah more tightly I moved on, Hawkins panther-silent behind me.
After a few more steps I halted and sniffed the air. ‘Can you smell that?’
‘I can, sir,’ Hawkins replied. ‘A stale odour, like old mushrooms.’
I nodded, my heart beating faster, and peered into the shadows. Was he here waiting for us? Willoughby? Was this a trap?
Maybe it wasn’t only him. Maybe, despite the silence, we were surrounded by the Wolves of London. I tried to swallow, but my throat felt like it was filled with tissue paper. My muscles slowly tightened as I anticipated an eruption of movement, pictured nightmarish creatures swarming from every nook and crevice, every opening, every clot of darkness.
Should I shout? Call out a challenge? Bring them into the open?
At least I didn’t feel tired any more. Adrenaline overload, I thought. I’d probably crash like a KO’d boxer later.
If there was a later.
There was nothing to do but keep moving forward. At each doorway I came to, each opening on my right, I paused, tensing, half anticipating an attack.
The theatre stayed silent. If there was anything here it was biding its time.
The mulchy smell grew stronger. My stomach coiled in response. I tried to breathe through my mouth, but that was almost as bad. It felt as though a bitter sort of dampness, a cluster of microscopic spoors or particles, was settling on my lips. Perhaps I was being poisoned.
‘Sir?’ Hawkins’ voice was a hiss in the dimness.
I glanced at him, and saw that he was indicating a door on our left.
A door that was standing ajar.
Was it significant? An invitation? A challenge? I raised my left hand, urging caution, and steadied my right hand with the gun in it. I crept towards the door, and as I did so the mushroom stench grew stronger until it was almost overwhelming.
Blinking, hoping my eyes wouldn’t water and blur my vision, I pushed the door slowly open.
Nothing moved. A wedge of feeble light crept into the room, dimly illuminating a small section of it. I stood on the threshold, peering, trying to make sense of what I could see. A table? No, a desk. Solid and heavy, like much of the furniture from this period. Probably mahogany.
But what was propped behind the desk? I got the impression of something spindly but top-heavy. A tangle of sticks? An effigy of some kind? A scarecrow?
‘One moment, sir,’ Hawkins whispered. ‘I have a box of lucifers…’
He leaned his cane against the wall and reached into his pocket. Seconds later there came the scrape and flare
of a match. The sharp, sulphurous tang of it was far preferable to the sour, mushroomy stench that hung heavily in the air. But sadly it was all too brief, quickly swamped by the more dominant odour.
Hawkins stepped up beside me and raised the match. Orange light swelled into the room, pushing back the dark, revealing what was slumped behind the desk…
‘Fuck!’ I blurted and took an instinctive step back, bumping into Hawkins. He dropped the match and the light winked out. As he fumbled for another, I bent double, pressing a hand to my stomach, and released a long gasp of air.
Although I’d only seen it for a split second, the terrible image of Horace Lacey lolling in the chair behind his desk was already branded on my mind. Even if I never saw it again – which wasn’t likely, as already I could hear the soft rattling of matches as Hawkins extracted another from the box – I doubted I’d ever forget the sight. The theatre manager was dead, his glazed eyes staring out at different angles beneath half-closed lids, his mouth hanging open. But it wasn’t this that had shocked me; it was the fact that beneath his head, which was intact, he had been nothing but a skeleton. His clothes and flesh – every layer of muscle and fat, every internal organ – had simply gone. Below the bloody stump of his neck Lacey had quite literally been stripped to the bone.
As a second match rasped and flared, I braced myself to look again. I vowed to examine the body as clinically as I could, to concentrate on the fact that Clover might need our help (I tried not to dwell on the fear that what had happened to Lacey might have happened to her too), and that any information we could arm ourselves with might prove useful.
I managed it… more or less. The most astonishing thing about Lacey’s corpse was how thoroughly the meat had been removed. There were a few errant shreds of flesh clinging to the skeleton, but for the most part the bones were perfectly white, almost gleaming, as if they had been sucked clean.
There was also very little blood. That was the other surprising thing. In the split second before I’d knocked Hawkins’ first match from his hand, my impression had been that there was blood everywhere. But when I looked again, I realised that although the walls and desk were spattered with it, there was nothing like the eight pints that the average human body contained.