Death and the Dreadnought

by Robert Wilton

  He saw me – I was rather obvious – and gaped for a moment. And then he was pointing, and yelling, and his companion was looking up too and shouting to someone else, and I pulled back and swore.

  I’d got onto the flat roof at one end. One side was the front, and the opposite side ran into a sheer wall rising further up. I couldn’t waste time hunting more drainpipes and I couldn’t trust my feet to stand the strain. I looked back the way I’d come, and fancied I saw a head appearing over the parapet. My hunter’s boots had carried him up the drainpipe well enough. Come along. I trotted towards the far end of the flat roof.

  As I came near, I saw that the end of the next building had a double gable: there was a deep gully between two sharply pitched rooves. The gully was for me. I entered its darkness happily, feet stumbling for their place in a gutter filled with the waste of storms and builders and birds.

  Dark tunnels are happy places for the naked fugitive, and it was typical of my luck that this one ran out after twenty yards in a blank wall, the different profile of the next building along. One fond glance back along my tunnel, one sober thought of the hunter working out where I must have gone, and I started to scramble up the tiles beside me.

  Immediately I slipped back down, into a heap in the gutter. Momentum, or I would never make it. I started up again, trying to keep low and scrambling with hands and feet and knees and not minding the slipping and ignoring the tiles that gave under me and just keeping the limbs moving and with a final lunge I had both hands on the crest of the roof.

  I pulled myself up into a crouch. To my right, the direction I’d come from, there was only the gable end; no good. Left it had to be, where the crest of the next roof stretched away.

  For a moment I gathered myself, poised in the crouch, catching my breath, aware again of my ridiculous nakedness, the most fantastical gargoyle silhouetted against the moon.

  From somewhere – I felt as though it was nearby, but I also felt that everyone in London was staring at me so it could have been miles off – someone screamed. I started along the crest of the roof.

  Again, not my first time. But again, my first time when completely naked. I was trying to walk, one foot either side of the crest, but the pain in my feet was throwing my balance and so it was more lurch than walk. Every few steps I would stumble and have to propel myself forwards on hands as well as feet, my moonlit arse surely the brightest most splendid target for my pursuers.

  I settled into a goodish rhythm, scrambling forwards like a monkey trying to escape a leopard and determined to make a race of it, occasionally twisting my head round to spot the pursuit, and it was in this manner that I ran into a chimney. I should have expected one to pop up some time or another, but it was well-camouflaged against the night sky and I had been looking the wrong way. I went sprawling, which is a perilous manoeuvre on the crest of a greasy roof at midnight with one’s vitals flapping. I pulled myself up, and took the opportunity to reach up and get a handhold on the chimney – its top was just above my head – and steady myself.

  There was a noise from the darkness behind me; the leopard was still coming on. With no choice, I started to edge round the chimney. Now the strain was all on my hands, not my feet. I could get a good grip on the top of the chimney but my feet, as I stepped off the crest and round the first corner, were on sloping tiles. My beleaguered toes took what weight they could, my legs were shaking with the attempt at control, and I unclenched one hand and moved it round and clutched at the chimney top again.

  It brushed something that didn’t feel like chimney and the night exploded in noise in front of me and a monstrous whirring rushed at the top of my head. I was becoming more sympathetic to those who suffered from unquiet nights, but assault by a bad-tempered pigeon – who I supposed had just suffered the avian equivalent of attempted murder by a fat man while he was clearing his head after a trying day and wondering about a massage – was shattering. My legs slipped away under me and I was left clinging to the chimney with my feet skidding for purchase on the tiles and the bird screaming in my ear.

  At which point there was a shot, and bits of chimney spattered over my face and shoulders, and the pigeon went berserk.

  I think it was this combination of the lethal and the ludicrous, the accumulated tension of twenty-four hours of chaos and danger, that finally destroyed my cool. ‘Oh bugger off, all of you!’ I roared into the darkness.

  I suppose that if you’re a frustrated assassin, deprived of the chance to get your man in the convenient warmth of a ground-level Turkish bath and forced instead to scramble over rooftops after him, it must be an immensely satisfying sight to see him hanging naked and immobilized from a chimney and wondering when a passing pigeon is going to take an interest in his genitals. A kind of mad anger at my ridiculous predicament was compounded by the thought of my pursuer’s satisfaction, of the slow pleasure with which he must now be lining up a more careful shot, and I was away.

  Two desperate lunges with my hands, feet scrabbling under me, had me round the chimney and dropping to the crest on the other side.

  Except there was no crest. The profile of the roof was different: it was sloping down to the front of the building, and I dropped and began to roll, and kept on rolling.

  You cover a lot of distance awfully quickly, on a slippery sloping roof with a jump-start. I had only begun to think of how to slow myself, had only begun to panic at what would happen when the roof ran out in a fraction of a second and I was catapulted out into the night – Nude Baronet Makes First Unpowered Flight Over Clerkenwell; Flattens Orphan Matchgirl In Descent – when I crashed into the parapet and clung on with every limb I could still feel.

  The hunter must be closing again. Stunned, I scrambled more or less upwards. The parapet was half a yard wide and beautifully flat. I pulled myself up. Immediately there was a scream. My first swaying view of the street, three storeys below, was of a woman pointing up at me. Now there were more arms pointing, and shouts. Then two men running from the nearest corner, down to the right, following the pointing arms, pointing me out to each other. Presumably the ground-level party just in from Ironmonger Row. To the right the parapet ran out into nothing. I took a deep breath, tried to steady my throbbing head, and set off along the parapet in the other direction. Immediately there was another shot somewhere behind me, and my trot became a sprint.

  I like to think that I made rather a fine sight, racing along that parapet, my naked form glowing in the moonlight. Ancient Greek Olympics; that sort of thing. In truth I didn’t notice. Followed by the excited spectators of east London, at least one gunman, and probably the damn’ pigeon too, I had to concentrate on that thin ribbon of parapet stretching out in front of me, and especially on when the stretching out would stop.

  When I saw the end of it, just a dozen yards ahead, I slowed. To the left the upward slope of the roof, and somewhere the gunman. To the right the street. Ahead darkness: oblivion. The parapet stopped at the corner of the building, and beyond it was the drop to a side street. Slowing to a walk, I saw the other side. It wasn’t more than an alley’s width, really, but to me it looked wider than the Thames. There was no way, in my condition, that I – And then another shot, and I ran again, took three calculated paces and jumped.

  I made the other side and kept on going. It was another sloping roof, but I was used to these now. I scrambled up on the diagonal, down the other side, and dropped a few feet to a flat roof beyond. Nothing either side of this, so I crossed it, and beyond it there was another small drop to another sloping roof. Down I went, and started more carefully across it. I risked one glance behind me. I couldn’t see my pursuer. I had to hope he hadn’t been desperate enough to risk the jump. I skirted a skylight – the only embellishment on this bit of roof. The other end of this roof came up against a flat wall. It rose a full storey above me, and there wasn’t even a drainpipe.

  The end of the road – or roof. Staring around myself, I knew that I couldn’t be seen, not from the road or from the di
rection I’d come. But it might only be a second before the pistol appeared over the rooftop, and found me trapped.

  The skylight. I started to contemplate the damage I might do myself if I dropped straight through it; wondered how thick the glass was, said a prayer for my poor feet, and other parts I was fond of. And then I saw it was ajar. I wrenched it upwards, wriggled through in the most ungainly fashion, and at last the naked roof-prowler of olde London dropped out of the night.

  I dropped onto bare floorboards, and in the relief at relative privacy, and warmth, and the absence of pigeons and gunmen, I didn’t notice the drop. I took in an enormous breath, and stood upright.

  There was a gasp from behind me, and a female voice said: ‘If you’re Father Christmas, I’m blowed if I know where you’ve got my present.’

  14.

  I turned.

  For a moment, neither of us said anything. I had nothing left. She presumably – and not unreasonably – was getting over the surprise of a naked man dropping out of the sky.

  She was dressed in a burgundy-coloured corset, with all the trimmings, and she was damned handsome. But for the fact that every extremity I still had left was more or less out of commission, I might have responded more suavely.

  She looked me down and up once. ‘I suppose that’ll have to do, present-wise’ she said. ‘Do you want one of my stockings?’

  I managed a slight bow. ‘Royal Aeronautical Society,’ I said. ‘Madam, I must apologize for dropping in so rudely. I imagine you’ll want to call the police now, or at least scream the house down. If there’s the slightest possibility of a brandy-and-soda before you do, I’d be eternally grateful.’ She considered this. ‘Oh, and I should say there’s a reasonable chance that a man with a pistol will shortly follow me, so we might move away from the skylight.’

  She looked at the skylight, and back at me. ‘Is he…’ – she gestured – ‘also naked?’

  ‘No, I think he’d stuck to the conventional look.’

  ‘Oh. Well what’s the use of that?’ She stepped towards me, and reached up and bolted the skylight. ‘Come along then.’ She turned and led me out of the corridor and into the next room.

  It was a bedroom-sitting room – on the basis that it was dominated by a bed, and much of the rest of the space was occupied by two battered armchairs. There was a ludicrously large lithograph of a church on the mantlepiece, and other bits of the bare plaster were covered by a pair of what looked like Gustav Dore prints, and some rather jollier playbills.

  We considered each other again. She was certainly worth a second look, and not just because of the tight-bound undergarments. It was a fresher sort of beauty than I’d have expected of a girl in this sort of dive in that sort of corset. Not painted on – although the face showed the leftovers of thick make-up.

  ‘Don’t want to sound over-critical,’ she said; ‘but you look rather frightful. Did you climb up a chimney or fall out of a balloon?’ Big eyes.

  I searched for something witty, and failed. ‘A fat man tried to crush me while I was bathing, and one of his friends has just chased me across the roof with a pistol.’

  She tutted. ‘Have you considered that you might be going to the wrong sort of parties?’

  ‘I can’t resist getting dressed up.’ I took a slow breath. I felt deeply weary. ‘Look, I don’t want to get in the way. You know – if you’re… expecting company.’ I gestured in the general direction of her body.

  ‘No, that’s–’ She turned pink, and then managed a little smile. ‘Thank you for your delicacy, but I am not – er – the kind of lady who expects company. Naked or otherwise.’

  ‘Oh, right ho.’ I couldn’t resist indicating the burgundy corset again. ‘Just naturally stylish. I see.’

  She looked rather cross. ‘Will you believe me if I manage not to ravish you – or anyone else – for the remainder of the night?’

  ‘You plan that far ahead?’

  ‘You frankly don’t look up to the job, anyway.’

  ‘Please believe me that I really don’t care. Perfectly respectable trade.’

  ‘Well, that’s not quite true, is it?’

  ‘The conventional English hypocrisy is foolish on the point. Besides, I’m really in no position to get snooty.’

  ‘That is certainly true.’ She glanced at my body again, then looked deliberately up. ‘Um – not wanting to give you the wrong idea again, but are you planning to stop, or are you just passing through?’

  I hesitated. ‘There is a real chance that if I leave now, the men who are after me will be waiting. The welcome would be… less congenial.’

  ‘No manners, some people.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of exposing you to danger. But actually, there’s more chance of that if I leave than if I stay.’

  She nodded. I felt the weariness heavy on me now. ‘Look, I should be candid. My name is Henry Delamere. As well as being a physical wreck, and some kind of magnet for every thug in London, I am also hunted by the police for murder.’ I winced. ‘Well, two murders.’

  ‘Oh. I see.’ She was keeping it light, but she looked worried now. ‘No sense doing things by halves, is that it?’

  ‘Seriously.’

  She took a step towards me, and looked up intently into my eyes. ‘My father believed that you could spot a lie if you looked closely enough.’ Big eyes, as I say. ‘But then he was extremely foolish, in his sweet way.’ They didn’t even blink. Her father must have got one thing right in his life, at least. ‘Are you going to murder me tonight?’

  I think it was the weariness convinced her. ‘I really don’t think I could.’ What was left of my mind was elsewhere, wondering about the fat man lying in the bath-house. ‘Actually, there’s an outside chance it’s three murders.’

  She gazed a moment longer. ‘Mm,’ she said. Then she nodded, once, decisively. ‘You’ll be sleeping in the armchair. Mind Sir Henry Irving.’ She turned away, while I puzzled at this. ‘I’ve got some iodine.’

  ‘A bucket of it’d do.’ I was talking to her back now; in its cords and frills it was no less engaging than the front. ‘I say: I don’t wish to seem a prude, but…’ – she stopped, and looked back at me – ‘you being so pure, I mean – you haven’t got anything I could put on, have you?’ She nodded.

  I glanced at the corset. ‘Something at the looser end of the scale, if you’ve got it.’

  The silk dressing gown – and it was silk; this girl spent her money very selectively, but well – barely reached my knees or elbows, but it covered my over-exposed essentials. It also made her more comfortable about getting close to me. I insisted on putting the iodine on myself, but found that the assorted strains of the previous couple of hours were now starting to burn in my shoulders, and I could barely reach one arm with the other. After watching me pityingly for a bit, she snatched the pot of iodine and took over.

  ‘I do beg your pardon,’ I said through exhaustion. ‘I never asked you your name.’

  She looked up into my face again. Big, big eyes, and a hand on my leg. A romantic moment, but for the fact that one of us was dressed like a Bedlamite and smeared in purple paste.

  ‘Annabella,’ she said. ‘I’m Annabella Bliss.’

  It was no less credible than anything else in that mad day. ‘Naturally,’ I said, and I think it must have been around then that I passed out.

  15.

  It was fully twelve hours later that I woke. Remarkably – for I’d never thought I’d know peace again – my night’s sleep was not only in a conventional bed, but entirely uninterrupted. Apparently not a single violent assault in all that time. And from the indent in the pillow beside me, it seemed that I had after all – quite unconsciously – shared the bed with my lovely rescuer.

  Waking started slow, and pleasant. And then I jolted awake, not knowing where I was, and then remembering, and remembering why. I started up quickly, and immediately roared in pain, as all of my abused muscles screamed their protest.

  Her head appeared
in the doorway. ‘Did you scream?’

  ‘Not at all. A glad cry to greet the morning; nothing more.’

  ‘Bit late for that; it’s afternoon.’

  Teeth gritted, I fought myself into a sitting position. ‘Look, I am sorry. I’d not meant to steal your billet. I must have passed out.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Your innocence remains untouched.’

  ‘It’s about the only thing.’

  ‘Besides, Sir Henry Irving wouldn’t have approved.’

  I didn’t follow this; I suppose the young people take their moral leadership where they can, these days. ‘Pardon me, I seem to remember you telling me – What’s your name again?’

  Her face turned prim. ‘My name is Annabella Bliss.’ She waited. ‘Any remark? Any humorous observation?’

  ‘Not in the least.’

  ‘Good.’ She disappeared. She was back a couple of minutes later with a saucepan. ‘Drink this. Broth.’

  I pretended to protest, but set into it. ‘I thought you probably needed it,’ she said. ‘You look terrible.’

  I looked down at my legs. My knees, and my feet, and various patches between, were an appalling purple and yellow mix.

  ‘You’re famous,’ she said, picking up a newspaper from one of the two chairs and tossing it beside me.

  I continued to spoon the broth, glancing at the paper. ‘Police Hunt Double-Murderer Aristocrat’ ran right across the page. ‘Public Outrage: Mad Baronet Lured Stranger To His Death’.

  Hopefully Lord Aysgarth wasn’t a regular reader of the Daily Chronicle.

  I skimmed the first pages. As well as killing David Sinclair and the man in my room, I had apparently ‘been responsible for a disturbance’ during the workers’ march. They only had a couple of facts, but cheerfully padded those out with the wildest speculations about my lifestyle and depravities. At the bottom of the second page was a smaller piece of late news: ‘Naked Lunatic Sparks East London Uproar: Was It the Full Moon?’ I didn’t draw her attention to it.