Georgie lowered his face a little way towards hers. He glanced again towards the stairs, then gave her a look of careful inquiry. ‘Keep safe, sister?’
Felicity Hardwick (aged 13) – In Paradisum deducant te Angeli.
She felt herself weaken. Georgie took her arm and rested it gently on his own.
‘Dear Georgie,’ she said. ‘How happy I am to see you.’
‘You might keep hold of me, sister, as we go up the stairs. In case you are taken light-headed again.’
He led the way, hunched by her side. When they passed Elf on the stairs, she did not look up. Something had been stirred in her. She felt it as the shock receded. Once, as a child, she had seen an old dog pulled from under an omnibus. Its head had been appallingly crushed and lay open like a hulled fruit. That pale mass, glistening and threaded with pink. She had felt it then too, as she was led away. A tenderness that was also a rage.
‘I will trouble you to step aside, Lord Hartington, sir.’ Georgie spoke with just enough emphasis, and she felt him straighten at her side. Elf drew back without a word.
‘Poor Georgie,’ Octavia said, when they had reached the landing. ‘I’m afraid I’m impatient with you sometimes, even when you’re trying to be kind. Especially then, perhaps. How awful you must think me.’
He halted for a moment, turning to her with a rueful smile. ‘Well now, I don’t know about that, but who can blame you, if you are? I am a good way off your pace in most things, after all. Still, there’s horses for courses, they say. There is cargo to be stowed, and I am to do duty as an escort. Why, it is as good as any commission. Now then, sister, you must show me which room is yours so that we may get on. This is not the worst of places by any means, but I do not like the look of all the patrons.’
It was hardly more than half an hour before they were on the road out of Deal. Their driver, Master Alfred had assured them, was often asked for by name, having bought his carriage out of the service of Lord Sackville himself. It ran along so smoothly, he said, that they would hardly know they were upon the road at all.
Master Alfred had taken them aside, before seeing them aboard, and had spoken to them in quiet confidence. He was a perceptive youth, for all his awkwardness, and he had formed some notion of how things stood. The other gentleman had returned to his room, he said, and had not yet reappeared. When he did, said Alfred, he might find that a cab was harder to come by, what with the London train leaving. He would do his best for him, of course, but the gentleman might be waiting an hour and more.
Georgie kept up his easy chatter when they were under way, though he took care to moderate his tone and kept watch for any sign that Octavia was tiring of it. She smiled now and then, but only half-attended. It was comforting to have him by her, but she could not pretend to be at ease. She tried to keep her thoughts from it, to occupy herself with small and practical concerns. With what she must do.
Ginny Foster (aged 24) – Et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Ierusalem.
Georgie broke off and sat abruptly upright. ‘What is it, sister?’
She had started from her seat, she realised, her hands out-thrust as if to shield herself from something. She had seen it again, for an instant. The girl in the shadowy room. The smoke and the moths. She could not escape it now. The darkness was complete.
‘Georgie,’ she said suddenly. ‘When you look at me, can you see a brightness?’
He blinked and passed a hand over his mouth. ‘A brightness, sister?’
‘A brightness, something out of the ordinary, something – oh, God, I don’t even know. I don’t even know what I’m saying.’
‘Octavia?’ He leaned towards her and spoke very gently. ‘Can you tell me what the matter is?’
She looked at him helplessly. Could she? Could she tell him? Could she open the packet and show him one of the photographs? Could she show him the picture of Ginny Foster? She had been arranged, like some of the others, on the steps of an altar. She had been dressed, as they all had, in a fine white gown. Hers was especially ornate, with a bodice of intricate lacework that rose to an elaborate ruff about her neck. Its sleeves were of such lavish proportions that they spilled from her outstretched arms to cover three entire steps. All about her, forming a broad and perfect circle, was an extraordinary arrangement of flowers. In the photograph their colours had been lost, but there were freesias and columbines, Octavia thought, and a great many roses and lilies. It had been summer when she was taken. The brightest days of June.
Could she tell Georgie? Could she show him? Taken by themselves, the photographs might seem merely peculiar. It was not uncommon for portraits to be made of the dead, though it was a practice she had always found ghoulish. One saw pallid infants, propped up on frilled pillows alongside their living twins, and hollow-cheeked wives fastened to dining chairs among their children, dutiful even in death. If Georgie was to understand, she would have to show him the rest: the letter from her mysterious informant, and the items of evidence he had provided; the telegrams and memoranda, the pages that had been torn from some hideous journal. She would have to show him everything, and would he understand, poor Georgie, even then?
‘It’s that Lord Hartington, isn’t it?’ He spoke gently still, but could not conceal his indignation. ‘That Elf of yours. He’s mixed up in something, isn’t he?’
‘Oh, Georgie,’ she said. ‘I hardly know where to begin.’
‘Well, as to that, you might begin with where it is we’re off to. We naval chaps do not relish a voyage without we are told something of the destination. Where is this Vesper Sands, and what is it we shall find there?’
‘It is a place a little way along the coast, or so I understand, where Lord Strythe keeps a house. Do you know of him, Georgie?’
‘Lord Strythe?’ He looked at her intently, spreading his hands on his knees. ‘Why, I do now if I never did before. The newspaper boys was calling his name from every corner before I left town. The tragedy in Half Moon-street, they’re calling it. He topped himself, they say. Flung himself off his own roof.’
‘The other papers have taken up the story, then?’ Octavia said. ‘They were quicker about it than I imagined. And they have larded it with all manner of speculation, I’m sure.’
‘You knew about it then? Before it was in the papers?’
‘It was our paper that first carried the report, Georgie. I wrote the article.’
‘You?’ His amazement showed plainly. ‘Mr Healy said you was off on some business for the Gazette, but I thought it must be a hunt ball or some such. Which, I mean, you being concerned with high society matters, as a rule, and not with—’
‘And not with anything of importance. It’s all right, Georgie. Have they given his name, then, in the newspapers? God, what a perfect idiot I’ve been. I told myself I was being careful in my choice of words, but I knew how it would seem. I knew, and I went along with it. Of course people thought it was Strythe. What else could they have made of it? And that was his intention.’
‘Whose intention?’
‘Elf’s, Georgie. Lord Hartington’s. He is not what he seems. No, he is not at all what he seems.’
Georgie looked away, with as much severity in his features as his nature permitted.
‘You may say it, Georgie, and no one would blame you. You may say that you told me so, that he and his kind were not to be trusted. But I thought I knew better. I thought I could make my way in their world even if I didn’t truly belong to it. I thought it was enough to be clever, Georgie, and to make a secret of all I truly cared for. I thought it was enough.’
He reached towards her, seeing her distress, splaying out his fingers a little way short of her arm. ‘Now, sister,’ he said. ‘There now. If you were deceived, it was only down to your own goodness. You played the lady better than a duchess, and yet you never forgot those who came up rough. You never forgot how matters might have stood for us, if not for the luck of the draw. That’s why it got under your skin, about them poor lasses in White
chapel. I saw it in you, when you came out of that boarding house. You were all talk about giving substance to the stories, but all you cared about was getting that girl back.’
She took his hand and pressed it between both of hers, but her eye was caught by the view. They had come to a bend that brought them within sight of the sea. It was half a mile away, or a little less, its surface drab and gull grey, coarsened by the restless weather. The window was quick with wet again, and was battered at intervals by rough pulses of hail.
‘Listen now, Georgie,’ she said. ‘We haven’t much time, and there is a great deal that I must tell you.’
XXV
It was still dark when Gideon was shaken awake. He started in fright, not recognising the figure who loomed above the bed.
‘Your guvnor sent me.’ It was Ned Cornish, the housekeeper’s boy. He set a mug on the nightstand, then stood in ungainly silence. ‘You’re wanted down below, he says.’
Gideon swung his legs out hesitantly. He sat on the edge of the bed, keeping his blanket about him so as to hide the slightness of his frame. Ned was a hulking boy of fifteen or so, and sullen even for his age. The night before, having himself been roused from his bed, he had hauled out a cart that was meant to be drawn by a donkey, and in the hour or more it had taken to bring Lord Strythe’s remains to the house, he had hardly uttered a word. When the body had been laid out at last – in a disused still-room set apart from the main house – he had stood for a moment in silence, a steam of exertion rising from him, then he had trudged back out to see about chaining the gates.
‘What time is it?’ he managed to ask. ‘If I may trouble you.’
‘Half past six, or near enough.’ Ned swung his arms loosely, curling his fingers about his thumbs. ‘You’re to come down, your guvnor says. Lady Ada has been told the news, and means to go and see him after her bit of tennis. You know how to play tennis?’
Gideon shook his head.
‘No more than I do. Still drags me out every day, she does. Fires them fucking balls at me.’
Gideon coughed. ‘It must be very trying.’
‘You’re wanted to take notes, he says. And to keep an eye to the lass. You’re to be sure of that, he said.’
Gideon stood up at this and freed himself from the tangle of blankets. ‘Is something wrong?’ he said, forgetting his nervousness. ‘With Miss Tatton, I mean. Is something the matter?’
‘Been wandering off, is all.’ Ned eyed him with dull pity. ‘More than before. Her below found her in the music room in the night, making free with books and papers. Lady Ada has a fondness for her, my mother says, but it won’t last if she keeps that up. Lady Ada won’t have nobody in among her papers.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Gideon edged towards the chair where his clothes were folded. ‘Lady Ada will forgive Miss Tatton, I hope. There is no wickedness in what she does. It is just that she has … that is, it is just that she is not quite …’
Ned stared for a moment, his broad features unaltered. ‘You best get on,’ he said. ‘Like I said, you’re wanted downstairs.’
He found Cutter in the drawing room. The inspector’s mood was sombre, but he was in easier temper than Gideon had feared, making no mention of his tardiness though it was half an hour since he had been sent for.
‘I am to take Lady Ada to see the remains.’ He had kept his place by the window when Gideon came in, and gazed out to sea as he spoke. ‘It is a duty I never cared for, no matter who it is laid out.’
‘No, sir,’ Gideon said. ‘It will be hard on Lady Ada too, I imagine.’
‘Lady Ada?’ Cutter gave a dry laugh. ‘Lady Ada is going about the place like a spring lamb. She is out there now in the rain, lobbing balls at young Ned. It is just as well, too, that she is not senseless with grief. We have a good many questions to put to her now that I would much rather have put to her brother.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Gideon hesitated. ‘If I may, sir, can I take it that the matter is no longer in doubt? That you believe Lord Strythe had some hand in what happened to Miss Tatton?’
‘Indeed I do, Bliss, and have for some time. I suspect he had a hand in that and more. Much more.’
‘But, sir.’ Gideon approached the window. He wished the inspector would turn from it, so that he could see his face. ‘But, sir, you did not – when I shared my own suspicions, you did not seem—’
‘Did not seem to credit them.’ Cutter was following the course of a lone trawler. ‘Look, Bliss. It was a bad day to venture out, but he thinks he can keep ahead of the weather.’
‘Sir.’
Cutter turned at last to face him. ‘I had my reasons, Bliss. It is in my nature to be wary of all such talk. My way is to say nothing until I am sure enough to say it before a fellow in a wig. And in this case I am all the more cautious. You asked me if I looked into special cases. I said nothing then, or as little as I could, because in that line especially I am slow to trust anyone. Yes, Bliss, there are special cases, but I must walk a very careful line when I go near them. In the first place, I must give them a more ordinary appearance if I am to bring them before my superiors, never mind before a court. I would not last long otherwise.
‘But it is not only that. In some such cases, I have come up against certain interested parties. Parties who do not welcome my curiosity. Who they are exactly I have not discovered, but they are well beyond my reach. We are not beyond theirs, though. They have their hooks in people. In the Divisions mostly, but there are some in the Yard too. High up and low down. Warnock is one of theirs.’
‘Inspector Warnock? The man we came across at St Anne’s?’
‘Oh, yes. He is no great specimen, mind you, and does not worry me much, but seeing him there told me that they had an interest in whatever business was at hand, and that we must keep our wits about us. But that did not mean that Warnock had any notion of what was before him. On the contrary, he is useful to them only because he never does. That was what made me think of the bottles.’ He looked out to sea again, where the fishing boat had changed course. ‘He is running for home, look. He does right, I suppose, but I liked him for taking his chances.’
‘The bottles, sir?’
‘The bottles that were found by the dead sexton. It seemed a plain enough thing, at first. A drunkard had failed his masters, and they dosed him with his own poison. Murderers are inclined to get notions, when they are at it long enough. But the neatness of the thing did not sit easily with me. Why twelve bottles? And why were three of them broken? That little show was not put on for no reason. I was meant to see it. Nine and three. I cannot be certain yet, but if ever a tally can be made of the souls who were lost to these demons, we may have our answer. We may know how many were lost, and how many saved. In any case, it made me think of your bit of crystal, and of what Esther Tull might have died for.’ Cutter looked at him, and for a moment something very like amusement showed in his face. ‘It was no easy matter for me, Bliss, but it came to me that you might have been right.’
Gideon coloured and lowered his head. ‘Thank you, sir. It comes as a great relief to me.’
‘Yes, well.’ Cutter beat his hands together, and seemed to bring his reverie to an end. ‘Do not lose the run of yourself just yet. There will be time enough for giving out prizes. Right or wrong, we are a good way from the finish. I have been hunting these bastards a long time, these Spiriters – yes, Bliss, that is who they are – and it seems we have run one of them to ground. Well, when I say we – your young miss made much of the running. I might have wished her to wait a little longer to settle her account with him, but there is not much that will stand in her way now.
‘He was not the only one, though. He did not act alone in all of this. That was my belief all along, but we may be sure of it now. If it had been only him, Miss Tatton’s business here would be finished. And we would know, Bliss, if her business was finished.’
Gideon clutched his cuffs. ‘How would we know, sir? What would happen?’
Cutter approached hi
m, resting a hand on his shoulder. ‘Bliss,’ he said. ‘You are a tender-hearted creature, as I have said before.’
Gideon swallowed and looked away.
The inspector cleared his throat carefully. ‘I do not mean to judge you harshly,’ he said. ‘You might have done much worse, having been left all alone in the world.’
Gideon scrubbed at his eyes with his sleeve, not trusting himself to speak.
‘Do not think me an ogre, Bliss.’ Gideon looked up. The inspector spoke softly now, so softly that he hardly sounded like himself. ‘I was left alone too, in a way.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Gideon said. ‘I have learned a little of your loss, and I am very sorry for it.’
‘Have you now?’ Cutter gave him a sharp look.
‘Sir, when you lost your—’ Gideon looked away. ‘When you spoke of hunting them a long time – was it then that the hunt began?’
Cutter was silent.
‘Only it seemed to me – pardon me, sir, if I go too far – it seemed to me that if that were so – if you yourself had been so grievously wronged – that bringing these men to justice might offer something more than mere professional satisfaction. That it might bring you peace.’
Still the inspector said nothing. He had spoken too freely. He could not think what had possessed him. ‘Forgive me, sir,’ he said, turning away. ‘It was not my place to say so much. Miss Tatton has been wandering, I gather. I will begin searching in the—’
‘The Priory,’ said Cutter.
Gideon halted and faced him again. ‘Pardon me, sir?’
‘The Priory.’ He had turned again to the window, and spoke in an absent way that Gideon had not witnessed before. ‘There was a house of that name, a mile or so from where I was born. It had been a grand enough place once, but for as long as I could remember it had stood derelict. I cannot say how it came about – it was in probate, perhaps – but by the time I was six or seven, it was overgrown entirely and the doors and windows were all bricked up. It troubled me to think of it, for some reason – to think of all those dark and empty rooms – and when we passed it I would plague my father with questions. It is only to keep out the thieves, he would say. It would be a nest of gypsies in a week, left as it was. But keeping fellows out of it was not what troubled me. What if there was someone in it still, I would ask him? What if someone dwelt there still, unseen and forgotten? He took no notice, of course, but it so happened that my father was called out one night – he was a constable before me, you see – by word of a fire. I went with him in the trap, and when we reached the place the flames had taken a quarter of the roof. We saw the room where it began, high up in one corner, and a window where half a dozen bricks had been knocked out so that someone might leap clear. I can see it still, how pale and fierce the fire burned within. It was only vagrants, no doubt, who had crept in and lain up a while, but at the time it seemed to me that I had been right all along – that the place had never been abandoned, that its fires had been tended unseen. Do you understand me?’
The House on Vesper Sands Page 27