by Will Thomas
“Thoughts?” I asked, as we walked back to the gate.
“Nobody sells snake oil like a snake.”
“Could you translate that from American to English?”
“The man gives every appearance of being helpful, but he’ll lie to your face if it suits his interests.”
“He was rather rude when we first arrived.”
Caleb nodded.
“He was, until he saw a way to use us. During the appeal you might be called upon as a witness to the fact that he was helpful to us, and free with information.”
“A paragon of citizenship.”
“You do talk posh, Mr. Llewelyn,” he said.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Where are we going next?” Caleb Barker asked at a pub near Newgate, a couple of streets from the prison. We agreed we both needed a pint after our experience.
“Back to Newgate to interview Keller. He’s the one who’s going to be hanged in a couple of days.”
“I know who he is. If you are so fond of this prison, that’s your prerogative. However, I’ve got some work I need to look after. I’ll meet you at the office later.”
He stood and reached for his coat pocket.
“I’ll pay for the meal,” I said.
He counted out some coins and tossed them on the table.
“I don’t like to be beholden,” he said as he left.
Touchy fellow, that Caleb Barker, I thought. Quick to anger, slow to forgive. When he was gone I relaxed a little. It wasn’t merely dawdling. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing Keller myself and I wanted to get my thoughts together.
While I was inching forward on the case, somewhere in London Jacques Perrine was probably lying low and building infernal devices. We had survived his first assault, which must have been a blow to his reputation. Our being alive was an affront to his abilities as a bomb maker. He would do something about it soon, I had little doubt.
Idly, I wondered what form his attack would take. Would it be one of those small black spheres one hears of, that roll under a European landau, vaporizing it and its royal occupants? Was it a timed device inside a Gladstone bag? A trip wire outside our moon gate? A long fuse allowing the anarchist the opportunity to be a half mile away before it detonated? These were cheery thoughts over lunch. I added my coins to Caleb’s and left the pub.
While Newgate is the best prison in which to be incarcerated if one is wealthy and willing to pay extra to have plush furnishings and food hampers carried in, on the other hand, if one owns no silver spoons or the ability to bribe a guard, it is the very worst of prisons. Newgate is the hanging prison. All the English prisoners whose offenses would lead to execution were brought here for eventual extermination. Here was where they put the dogs down, the human curs, those who had lost their humanity. Men like Joseph Keller.
When I saw him shuffling into the interview room, chains about his ankles, I thought about how he’d butchered his wife and children in cold blood with the aid of an axe and a wood fire stove. He was still human like I was, yet he had been capable of atrocities beyond what I could comprehend. Does one cease to be a human being by committing such an atrocity? The judge had determined that his crime was to be punished by death.
I had helped in this investigation. In fact, I had been instrumental in his capture and had spoken in court. I had taken work in Dockland as a navvie alongside him and complained about the “strain and strife” and how she was always going on about needing this and needing that. I had also told him I was concerned about whether she was stepping out on me with another man. My invented tale had cracked him open like a walnut, and he went so far as to tell me the sewer tunnel he’d dropped the bones into. It had not been difficult to locate the pathetic remains of his family and kin.
His wife had been cuckolding him for some time, taking his hard-earned money and even bringing her lovers into their marriage bed. She was brazen about it, so much so that most of the neighbors knew before he did. The real blow was the confession that neither of the children were his, and in fact, they had different fathers altogether.
The neighbors told me they believed she’d gotten what she deserved. They thought him to be a good fellow, hardworking and serious, neither a drunk nor a wife beater, a good provider by East End standards. I suspected the presiding judge felt the same way, but the children were innocent, and though Emma Keller was a libertine and an adulteress, neither marked her for death. His longsuffering temper had finally snapped and he did the horrible deed. The vivisection of the corpses for disposal had unhinged him, I think, and he felt the need for someone to confess to. Unfortunately for him, I was that man.
This was not an interview I wanted to undertake, but some matters about the enquiry business are not pleasant and this was one of them. Still, I squirmed as he was brought in.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said. He didn’t bellow or curse at me. He seemed resigned to see me. “Come to gloat, have you?”
“No,” I answered in a low voice.
He sat down in a chair, the chains at his wrists and ankles puddling between his feet.
“What did you come for, then?” he asked. “To be my chum again, bosom comrade-in-arms? Let bygones be bygones?”
“No.”
“Seeking absolution? Needing forgiveness?”
“No.”
“Good, then. I’m fresh out.”
I expected anger from him, but he had become fragile. He seemed to have shrunk. His head was shaven down to nubs, though it had already been short. They had shorn him of his beard, however, and he looked naked without it. The skin of his face was gray, and his broad arms hung on his frame. I suspected he no longer ate much.
“Well, Alf. Wait, you ain’t Alf. What was the name again?”
“Thomas Llewelyn.”
“Right. You speak very posh now. You had me fooled. Was you an actor once?”
I knew it would happen, and it did. The guilt set in. She had been poison, Emma Keller, and collecting evidence against him had been my duty. Her family had lost three daughters, a granddaughter, and a grandson. Who should pay the cost for that, other than the man that bashed her skull with an axe?
“No, no actor,” I muttered.
Guilt is palpable to me. It’s like being engulfed in a wet and heavy blanket. Your tongue cleaves to your mouth and it is difficult to breathe.
“Wad’ge come for, then? Came to say good-bye?”
“I’ve got some news you might find interesting. The offices of our agency were blown out from under us by a bomb. Mr. Barker is in hospital.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “You detectives do have some laughs,” he said.
“Is there no gloating on your part, then?”
“Nah. It was a fair cop. You was just doing your duty, though it wasn’t the kind of profession I’d take on. Too cold and calculating by half.”
It was an absurd position, a multiple murderer lecturing me on ethics, and yet I felt it. He was affable, a natural leader among the navies, uneducated but keen minded. He’d done the best he could with what nature and society had given him until he had been tricked by Emma. She had been rotten to the core.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” I asked.
“Two sisters living in the Chapel.”
Whitechapel, I thought, the worst district in London, where the Ripper had plied his trade.
“Married?”
“One is. The other, Mary, she’s touched in the head. I send them a few shillings now and then. They’ll be beneficiaries in a couple of days. After I’m buried, the girls will have something jingling in their pockets for a while.”
I watched him carefully. By that time in my employment, I was generally certain when someone was trying to trick me. He wasn’t.
“Is your mum alive? Is there anyone to mourn you?”
“No, no one.”
“Does the name Camille Archer mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“Henry Strathmore?”
“No.”
“Jacques Perrine?”
He shook his head.
“Jack Hobson?”
“You reading to me from the Kelley Book Directory?”
“Sorry.” I stopped. I had run out of things to say. “Have you had any visitors, in particular, a pretty girl with a snub nose?”
He looked up at me. “Dressed like a lady?”
“Probably.”
“She was in widow’s weeds. Come to see me. Or rather, had me come out here to see her. First woman I’d set eyes on in a while.”
“What did she say?”
“Her mistake. She thought I was another prisoner. She didn’t leave, though. What was my sentence, she asked.” He went into a falsetto. “‘Oh, dear, how tragic! How you must suffer! You will not be forgotten. You will be avenged.’”
“Avenged?”
“S’what she said. Barmy, that one. Jittery eyes. Thought to myself, I’m in here and she’s out there? I asked not to see her again. I can do that, you know. It may be the only power I have left.”
I stood, feeling the need to say something, but what? I couldn’t apologize for the part I had played in his incarceration.
“Are you coming?” he asked.
It hit me like a jolt what he was speaking of.
“To the hanging?” I asked. “I hadn’t thought.”
“Come if you like. You was as close a friend as I ever had, even if you went against me. Even if you was false from the very beginning.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Ta, then.” He stood. “Guard!”
Five minutes later I was literally pushed out the gate into Old Bailey Street. I was choking as if my mouth were full of cotton wadding. Shaking, I walked into an alley and was sick against the wall.
The first blow swiped across the back of my knees. The second would have shattered my ulna if I hadn’t strengthened the muscles around it. The third caught me in the ribs. I pushed off the wall and raised my stick.
The alley was narrow and in near-perfect darkness. I could make out a tall man with a bowler hat and a stick. I had fought with canes for six years and it was my weapon of choice. As I tried to get my bearings, I evaluated what sort of weapon he used. Either his stick was hollow metal or it was some kind of hardwood like maple filled with a rod of steel.
I stepped in, stick raised high over my head with my right hand, my left hand raised forward to counterbalance. It was how Monsieur Vigny had taught us in Barker’s bar-jutsu school. The man took the same stance as if it were natural to him, as if he, too, were trained in the art of La Canne.
He swung. I parried and riposted. He parried. My cane shook under the blows. It was stout ash, but it was not metal.
One blow got in and smacked my ear and shoulder. The muscles there protested. I swung, but encountered the wall, spoiling my aim. I had to show this fellow I knew what I was about or he’d be at me harder. I switched from La Canne to Bhatta. The first was French, defending with the point, like fencing. The second was good old Irish shillelagh fighting. I tossed my stick in the air, caught the ferrule, and crumpled the crown of his bowler. A point for the home team. I pressed my advantage, moving in on him. My hand actually caught his stick and I clouted him on the shoulder. Another stick caught me hard in the chest, making my heart skip a beat.
There were two of them there in the shadows. Blows came down like sparks after that, mostly on me, but I gave as well as I could. I aimed where they might be, and kept swinging. The narrowness of the alley was to my advantage, for the second fellow could not circle around and attack from the other side. I was using the first man as a shield, not that he’d stopped putting up a fight. My shoulders had taken most of his blows.
This wouldn’t last, I realized. It was two against one, both of them expertly trained, and they had heavy sticks. The odds were not in my favor. But I was holding my own. I caught the first one in the face, and he began spitting blood. I could hear it.
Suddenly, there was a wail from the alleyway, and both of us stiffened. The attacker in front swung, but only took a chip out of the brick wall behind my head. He pulled his battered bowler lower about his ears, brushed past me, and was gone.
I stood for a minute in the heavy shadows, trying to catch my breath. I was panting like a racehorse. I was also waiting for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. It was deathly quiet and the noise of the street sounded far away.
The second attacker lay supine on the ground, not moving, possibly not even breathing. What in the world had happened? To my knowledge, I hadn’t brought down a blow on his skull or done anything to stop him. I had barely touched the fellow. My stick wasn’t long enough. But he’d been stabbed, I was certain, since there had been no shot. He’d screamed in surprise and in great pain. It was le cri de mort. Someone had come from behind and plunged a blade into him without a word and fled. A sword cane, perhaps, or a knife. It had been two against two, only I hadn’t realized it.
Taking a breath, I put one hand in my pocket and raised my stick to my shoulder. Then I strolled out of the alley, whistling. I stopped at a shop window and pretended to examine combs and brushes. I required a stout comb to work through my mop of hair, but I did not risk speaking to the shop owner and being recognized. The bookshop beside it had more customers. I stepped inside, moved to a far corner, and found a stool. There, I sat and shook. Everything hurt. I’d have bruises for weeks, but nothing was broken that I could tell. Mac made a fine lineament. I must remember to have him make some when I got home. If I got home, I thought.
After about five minutes I rose, pulled my hat down snugly on my curls, and wandered out of the bookstore. I walked to the corner and looked about. It was a normal day. Hansoms wheeled by, people took in the September sun, and all seemed like any other day.
“What took you so long?” Caleb Barker asked in my ear.
“What?” I said, nearly jumping.
The Guv’s brother was standing just behind me, his arms crossed.
“I finished my errand. I’ve been standing here getting my shoes shined, waiting for you to finish in there. What did that fellow do? Confess to everything but killing Julius Caesar?”
Had he been the silent friend in the alley? He looked as normal as any other day. There was no hard breathing, no knowing look. His boots were highly polished. I looked him in the eye.
“Let’s go, then,” I said.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Caleb and I were at St. Pancras again the next morning, bound for New Forest, Hampshire. It was more than two hours of rail travel to reach Burberry Asylum. Even a dedicated enthusiast of rail travel can be bored after such a distance. Caleb took to haunting the corridors, hoping for a glimpse of feminine beauty. Apparently they are in short supply in the rugged landscape where he lives. I merely thought of my Rebecca.
Burberry Asylum, or to give its full name, The Burberry Institution for the Violently Insane, is shaped like a Roman caltrop: three equidistant lengths of buildings, radiating out from a central structure with a tall tower. The tower was full of guards armed with rifles, fine shots one and all. The building is encircled by a tall, square wall with three gates topped with smaller guard towers. It is fortunate that such precautions were taken, since on fine days like the one we had, the patients were allowed out into the sunshine to wander about as they saw fit. Benches were set about to allow these denizens the opportunity to compare notes as to proper methods of murder or other violent crimes. One of the three sections was given over to women, and was separated by iron fences. The women wore plain blue dresses and black bonnets and it would be difficult to tell one from another. Many of the male prisoners stood by the gate passing remarks and flirtations to the other side, which in turn was throwing them back. I would not think there were so many violent women in all the Isles.
Caleb and I were led inside by a guard, for our own protection, but in a moment a man came bustling forward in a morning coat and a top hat.
“How may I help you gentlemen
?” he asked, removing his spotless silk hat. He was a little taller than I, with a fan of thin black hair plastered across his bare scalp, a neat mustache, and thick spectacles.
“We are here to see a prisoner and to look at his records,” I stated.
“I’ll lead you there. And you are…?”
“Thomas Llewelyn, private enquiry agent. My employer was instrumental in capturing one of your inmates. This is Mr. Caleb Barker, a colleague.”
He shook my hand with both of his. Barker’s brother did not offer his.
“I’m Dr. Anderson, at your service.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
“What patient are you here to see?” he asked, clasping his hands behind his back as we walked along.
“Henry Thayer Pritchard.”
“I might have known. He’s one of our more illustrious residents. Has his name come up in any enquiry? I assure you he has been a model prisoner since his arrival.”
“Hello, Doctor!” an inmate called as we passed. The man’s head was shaved and he wore a nightshirt made of canvas.
“Hello, John!” he called, then turned to us. “They try to curry favor, you see.”
“How can the violently insane be allowed to walk about freely on the grounds?” I asked. “This seems more a sanatorium than an asylum.”
“That is the attempt. We had a black reputation for several years and there was the threat of closure. Instead, we went to a more humanitarian method pioneered by the Swiss. We have had much less trouble since we have implemented it. Of course, one must realize that the inmates are and shall probably remain criminally insane despite their treatment. Nonetheless, we hold interviews with our more docile inmates and in some cases we have had some success. Watch your head here.”
The latter was for Caleb’s benefit. If he hadn’t ducked, the doorway might have struck him on the forehead.
We stepped through the front door into an open room with a small library on one side and a dining hall on the other. A number of the inmates were within view. Some of them were not physically acceptable to modern society and others chattered or screamed. It was unsettling to watch, even for Caleb Barker.