The House on Vesper Sands

by Paraic O?Donnell

  ‘Where is Lord Strythe?’ she demanded, approaching a serving boy. Even as she spoke, she had hardly a notion of her own intentions, or of exactly what pretence she was adopting. ‘I was to be sent for at once when his plans were known.’

  ‘If you please, miss,’ he said. ‘I shall pass word as quick as you like, but it’s Mr Maitland sees to the comings and goings of Her Ladyship’s guests.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Octavia. ‘You have been to and fro with your ices since I came in, and must be passing through the kitchens. You don’t mean to tell me, surely, that there is no talk below stairs of my uncle’s situation. His Lordship will expect that arrangements have been made for me. You did not think he would leave me to traipse home alone in the snow?’

  The boy looked anxiously about the room. ‘Well, since it’s your uncle, miss, I expect there’s no harm in saying. Only you mustn’t say as it were me who told you, or Mr Maitland will skin me. His Lordship has been called away, miss. He’d hardly got here when the word came. He’s been took below to leave by the back of the house. Her Ladyship said it must all be done without a fuss.’

  ‘Called away by whom?’ Octavia said. ‘My uncle is not on a casual social call.’

  Again the serving boy looked about him in discomfort. ‘Look, miss, His Lordship was most anxious to light out directly, that’s all I can tell you. He’s most likely waiting for you now, since his carriage couldn’t hardly have been took in to the stables. Shall I send word that I’ve found you, miss?’

  ‘No,’ said Octavia at once. ‘No, it is very good of you, but I must get along. I should be obliged if you would show me the way, but without a fuss, just as you say. We must do nothing to add to Lady Ashenden’s embarrassment.’

  She moved quickly below stairs, meeting no one’s eyes until she came to the draughty passageway that gave on to the stable yard, where a flask was being passed around while a footman gave a bawdy account of an incident in a fortune teller’s tent.

  The servants fell silent at her approach. ‘Oh, good heavens,’ she cried, with slightly more theatrical emphasis than was needed. ‘Oh, I pray I am not too late. Where is Lord Strythe? I must see him before he leaves.’

  The groom who had the flask held it half hidden in his cupped hand, uncertain whether deference was required. The footman appraised her for a moment before he spoke. ‘Steady on, miss,’ he said. ‘There’s a fuss. His Lordship mustn’t be detained. He’s been called away on—’

  ‘On urgent business. Yes, yes, I know all that, but there is—’ She cast about for a moment in desperation. ‘There are donations, you see, that must be lodged to the account of the foundation. The gentleman from Coutts is on hand, but nothing can be done until His Lordship has signed the instrument. Quickly now, where is his carriage?’

  ‘Which it just this minute turned into the lane from the stables. I am sorry for it, miss, but you will not catch him now unless it is by pelting after him as you are.’

  ‘Then that is what I must do,’ said Octavia, pushing past him. The lane outside was almost in darkness, but at its end the lights of Piccadilly could be seen, and against them the silhouette of the carriage as it laboured over the poor cobbles. On her bicycle she might easily have caught it up, but she had hidden it near the gates of Green Park, and even at a run she could not hope to close the distance now on foot. The carriage had gone some two hundred yards already, and when it reached the better paving of Piccadilly, the horses would be brought to a trot. She was too late.

  ‘Miss,’ the footman called to her from the doorway behind her. ‘It’s a dog of a night, miss. One of the lads will run out for a cab so as you can follow after him. Come along in, miss, or you’ll catch your death.’

  And then it came.

  Distantly, she felt herself lurch, and knew that she had grasped a railing. The vision was fragmented and indistinct, as if a magic lantern were playing upon rags of muslin. She saw a dark interior, some unknown room. Two figures were in shadow, upright or crouched, but intent, always, on the one who lay between them. She was pale and still, and illuminated faintly, as if by moonlight.

  That was all, there was never more. It was almost nothing, like the vestige of some long-ago dream, but it left her weak and shaken always, as if she had witnessed some unspeakable thing and stood by in helplessness.

  She clung to the railing as it passed, putting a hand to her chest to soothe her breathing. It was a trick of the imagination, nothing more, brought on by a lack of rest. She ought to seek out a tonic of some kind. She heard the servants calling, and their footsteps as they approached. She ignored them, turning her attention again to Lord Strythe’s carriage, which had halted now just short of the corner. A gauze of fog had settled about it, and the thin snow was a greyish smut in the uncertain air. For a moment she saw nothing, then a figure resolved itself. A man had come forward from the shadows, his movements fluid and assured, and when he reached the roadside he did not trouble himself to flag the carriage down. He made himself seen, then simply waited.

  The door of the carriage was flung out and a step briskly lowered. The man on the footway approached then paused, seeming to confront the occupant before slowly shaking his head. He looked up finally, as if searching the heavens, but perhaps it was only that he had noticed the gathering snow. He climbed inside, rapping sharply on the frame before pulling the door closed behind him. At this the carriage drew sharply away, turning into Piccadilly in a swirl of mist and horse breath, and in moments even the clatter of wheels and hooves could no longer be heard.

  IV

  The snow had died away in the night. Where it had lain on the ground, it survived only in smutted brackets, and in the roads the tainted slush was churned under wheels to a running filth. It was early still, not yet fully light, but Soho was thronged with men and women of all walks, with omnibuses and carriers’ carts and the dozens of horses that drew them. Gideon lurched among them in a greyish stupor, veering aside at intervals to support himself against a wall or a lamp post, or to bring up a thin but scalding vomit. He could taste it still, the resinous sweetness that had darkened his senses. It was on his breath, and in his sodden lungs. He felt it when he moved his head, encumbering his wits and shrouding his very spirit.

  Miss Tatton was gone. Of that much he was certain. He had known it somehow while he still slept, feeling her absence even before the cold. His first thought, when the sexton roused him, had been to look for her. He had writhed free as he was dragged to his feet, had scrabbled at the cold stone, only half-seeing, for some trace of her, some sign that she had been real.

  He found the damp and filthy rag first, and near it a small thing that he might have overlooked if he had not felt its buckled edge under his palm. A keepsake. She had kept it, after all. He closed his fingers about it as he was hauled again to his feet, and could do no more before he was marched from the altar, his shoulders gripped by a pair of tobacco-stained talons.

  Gideon struggled and twisted still, looking about the church in desperation. ‘The young girl,’ he cried. ‘Please, sir, the poor young girl who was here – did you see her leave? Did you see her taken?’

  ‘A girl, is it?’ the sexton snarled, his breath reeking poisonously of gin. He was an aged and misshapen creature, but possessed of a surprising fierceness. ‘There’s a whippet for you. He don’t stop at trespassing, this one. He comes here whoring, and he wants his trollop’s comings and goings kept in the parish register. Get to fuck, you filthy pup.’

  Gideon was spun about and goaded once more along the aisle, the barb of a thumb driven into the soft flesh above his hip. ‘You mistake me, sir,’ he said, staggering. ‘I am taking holy orders myself, and we are on consecrated ground. The young lady I found here was ill or injured, and I kept her company only until other help could be found. But there was foul play of some kind, sir. I was put out of my senses, but learned first that the girl was in danger. We must do all we can to find her, sir. Surely you see that it is our Christian duty?’

&n
bsp; The sexton paid no heed. He kept up his coarse talk as he drove Gideon from the church, and if he believed a word of his account it left him unmoved. He shoved him into the alley, delivering a sharp kick to his right haunch, and when Gideon turned again to plead with him, he took up a discarded trotter and hurled it at his face, bawling a final oath as he slammed the door.

  In Shaftesbury-avenue, Gideon picked his way among the laden drays and the heaped barrows of the costermongers, threading a path between the wheels of two stalled and heaving omnibuses. He struggled still to bring order to his thoughts, and to form some clear notion of what he might do. Miss Tatton had fallen prey to some wickedness, he was convinced of that much, and he must seek help for her without delay, but who could he turn to now for aid or guidance? His recollections were imperfect still, and he had not made sense of all she had told him, but insofar as her words touched upon his uncle, there could be no mistaking her meaning.

  They took him first.

  He would seek him out, even so. Miss Tatton had been in earnest, without doubt, but might herself have been deceived. If she had been drugged, as he believed, her conviction might have been born of some delusion. He would make his way first to his uncle’s lodgings, having nowhere else to go in any case, and perhaps he would find him at home after all. Perhaps they would take a restorative breakfast together, his guardian attending calmly as Gideon recounted the events of the night before, and seeing at once what ought to be done.

  It was a warming prospect, but there was a dread in Gideon that he could not easily shake. If it was true – if the reverend doctor had indeed fallen victim to those she had spoken of – then he must prepare himself for the worst.

  Gone now. He’s gone.

  Neuilly was his only living relative, however peculiar their relations had been, and no doubt the burden of such a loss would be felt in due course. In the meantime, if his fears were borne out, he must keep his wits about him. He must give an account of these bewildering circumstances that would secure his position until his claim could be proven, yet must ensure too that no time was lost in searching for Miss Tatton.

  He would go to the house in Frith-street, then. He would present himself to his uncle’s landlady and persuade her, if he could, of his honest intentions. If Neuilly proved to be missing, or worse, he would ask to be admitted to his rooms, where some plainer intelligence might be found of what it was – of whom it was – that his guardian had feared. If nothing else, Gideon might come upon some evidence of his own standing, and on the strength of it be shown a measure of hospitality.

  He was much preoccupied by these thoughts, and when he felt his shoulder roughly grasped he came about in considerable alarm, only to be confronted by a sallow and ill-shaven young man who did not seem entirely steady on his feet. He wore what appeared to be a shabby uniform – his tunic did not match his trousers, and was missing several of its buttons – and when he addressed Gideon his speech was laboured and indistinct.

  ‘Here, mate,’ he said, resting a hand again on Gideon’s shoulder. ‘Give you a turn, did I? Sorry about that, chief.’

  The man pitched forward a little, and on his breath Gideon again caught the sour taint of gin.

  ‘Sorry about that, chief,’ he repeated. ‘But don’t you worry yourself, I’m a poleef—’

  He lurched slightly and broke off, righting himself with Gideon’s support.

  ‘I’m a police. Off. A poliff – I’m a sergeant, innit.’ He let out an escalating sequence of belches. ‘Sorry, chief. Bit of a late night is all.’

  ‘I see.’ Gideon held himself stiffly under the man’s weight, not welcoming this new intrusion. ‘How may I help you, Sergeant?’

  ‘Which I—’ The young sergeant paled for a moment, then averted his face and retched. It was a moment before he recovered himself and resumed. ‘Which I’m wanting directions, is all, and you had the look of a chap who knows where he’s going.’

  ‘Well,’ said Gideon, ‘I’m afraid my own knowledge is—’

  ‘What it is,’ the sergeant continued. ‘What it is, right, I’m support – I’m supposed to report to some inspector who lives hereabouts, and I ain’t got a fucking notion where I’m going. I’m down the King’s Cross-road, usually.’

  ‘I should be glad to help,’ Gideon said, a little coldly, ‘but I’m afraid I—’

  ‘“Number six, Frith-street,” the guvnor says, like that’s any use to me. I says to him, I been a Finsbury man since I was took in. I says, you send me up to Soho, mate, you might as well be sending me to fucking Wales. So, do us a favour, chief, and point me the right way.’

  Number six, Frith-street. Gideon stared for a moment, and the idea came to him in the same moment as the recollection. That copper, she had said. Bella, the woman last night. He ain’t that copper, is he?

  A policeman – the very policeman this sergeant was looking for – had his lodgings at the same address as his uncle. That policeman’s sergeant would have a ready reason to call on him at home. He would have his inspector’s ear, if he should have witnessed sinister events that warranted investigation. And he might – it was a more practical point, but not without an urgency of its own – have some small expectation of being fed and watered in the course of his duties.

  Gideon drew himself up and cleared his throat. Already his reservations were gathering force – his senses were far from fully restored, and he was some way from trusting his own judgement – yet he felt that a moment of providence had presented itself, and that he must act before it was snatched away. ‘Why, certainly,’ he said, pivoting from under the drunken sergeant’s arm so as to bring himself face about. ‘You have gone a little astray, I’m afraid, but you will make up the time if you hurry.’

  In truth, the man was hardly a hundred yards from his destination, but Gideon pointed now in the opposite direction entirely. His knowledge of the neighbouring streets was crude, and he was half in fear that some passer-by would denounce his deception. The directions he gave were somewhat faltering in consequence, but they would – if they could be followed at all – bring the sergeant not to the home of his superior officer but to some uncertain place in the vicinity of Leicester-square.

  It was a shabby turn to do any fellow, no matter how low a sort he might seem, and the shame Gideon felt only deepened his general sense of misery. Yet he reflected, as he watched the drunken policeman totter away, that he was put to such lengths by dire need, and that the means he had chosen, however dishonest, were justified by an honourable end. He had a duty now to Miss Tatton, and indeed to his uncle, and must keep that in sight even if it was at some small cost to his conscience.

  Yet it occurred to Gideon, as he drew near to the house, that he had little notion even now of what that duty might be. He had first encountered Neuilly as a boy of six or seven, when he had been sent by his ailing father to visit him at the rectory he then occupied. He remembered almost nothing of his time there save for the very last day, when he had been conducted alone to the reverend doctor’s study, perhaps to pay his respects before returning home.

  His uncle had been occupied, Gideon recalled, with a number of butterfly specimens that he had gathered. His hands, when his young nephew entered the room, were enveloped by a bag made of fine dark cloth. From it he produced a peacock butterfly, whose lavish wings blinked in panic as he held it out for the boy to see, then all at once grew still.

  ‘There,’ his uncle said. ‘As if it were enchanted. To subdue a specimen for fixing and mounting, it is necessary only to hold its thorax like so, between finger and thumb, and to apply certain precisely moderated pressures. It requires practice, naturally, but no more than might be expected.’

  Gideon had offered no response that he could recall, and perhaps none had been expected. His uncle had not appeared forbidding, exactly, but there had been an untouchable remoteness about him even then, as if he were a fixture of some observable but vastly elevated sphere. If Gideon had formed any distinct impression, it was that a puzzle
was being set before him, and one that he was not yet equipped to solve.

  ‘Inachis io,’ his uncle intoned. The insect’s Latin name, in those days, had meant nothing to him, but the particular splendour of its sound – like an incantation, almost – had remained with him. ‘First described,’ Neuilly continued, ‘by Linnaeus himself, whose works you will naturally come to know. A common creature, but miraculous for all that.’

  Again it seemed to Gideon that this was no idle observation. Something had been agreed upon that he had no part in. Something was now expected of him, even if its nature was all but hidden. His father, when he returned home, had given no explanation that he could now recall, but matters became plain soon enough. By the time of his father’s death – he lived for eight or nine months more – Gideon had been sent, by his uncle’s good offices, to a school at Ashfell in Cumbria where boys who were not quite born to that station (these were the words of his first master in that place) were prepared for Cambridge and for holy orders, and where, on the last day of term, he was summoned to the rooms of the dean. On that occasion, and each of its kind thereafter, a brief communication was read to him.

  ‘The reverend doctor is not dissatisfied with your progress.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘The reverend doctor is content for your instruction to continue.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘The reverend doctor is obliged by his particular ministry to keep no fixed abode, and to make do instead with various temporary accommodations. These are wanting in the comforts and amusements that a young boy naturally seeks, and he commends you therefore to the care of Mr and Mrs Strachan until the commencement of the new term, the groundskeeper’s cottage being near at hand and having a room that has been unoccupied since that family was visited by tragedy.’