“To get to the heart of it, the man who calls himself Narbondo murdered his own brother in cold blood. He hanged him from the limb of a tree, endeavoring to make it seem that Edward was a self-destroyer. But fate is eccentric, Professor, and never more so than in this instance, for my late husband apparently found Edward still swinging from the branch, and Narbondo gawking at him, quite satisfied with himself, I’m sure.
“How do I know this, you’re wondering. I can reveal that to you now, although I could not have yesterday, when Mary Eastman was still alive. Mary was a witness to the crime. Narbondo had the temerity to suggest that with Edward removed from the world, Mary might naturally favor himself, Narbondo, who was bound for glorious things, for power over life and death. Of course she spurned him. She saw quite clearly that he was a living horror, and she told him that she would see him hanged, an eye for an eye. And so he threatened her with the same fate, and she knew absolutely that he meant it. She fled, in fear for her life, but almost at once my late husband appeared, and she turned aside from the path and hid herself.
“They cut the body down, the two of them, and took it away. When Edward failed to come home that evening, there was a general hue and cry. A bloody knife was discovered, and marks of a body having been dragged to the edge of the river. It was spring, and the river was in flood, and it was assumed that Edward’s body was somewhere downstream, tumbling toward the sea, and on that assumption the search ended.
“I understood the tale to be true, for what else was there for me to believe? Part of me suspected that Narbondo had wielded the knife; his demeanor, however, showed no trace of it. Years would pass before Mary Eastman told me the tale, although it was nearly beyond her powers to do so. The poor girl bore no blame, of course, for Edward was already dead, and she was afraid for her life. Narbondo sent her letters over the years, with clippings from the London papers, accounts of murders and mutilations, just to keep his threats fresh in her mind. She burned them, but they struck home in any event. She told me that she had never slept peacefully, although I pray that she does so now.
“What I tell you next is speculation, although much of it I heard from the mouth of my own shameless husband in the end. He spoke lightly of hellish things, as if there were no such place, if you take my meaning. He saw no virtue in sentiment. You believe yourself to be a rational man, Professor, but I tell you that there are depths of rationality that you haven’t plumbed, and never will, for you don’t have it in you to do so.”
St. Ives looked out through the window at the moon that had risen above the treetops. It was quite dark outside, and he wondered abruptly what Alice and the children were doing while they waited for his return.
Mother Laswell poured another inch of sherry into the glasses, and studied his face. “You’ve a conscience,” she said to him, “and you’ve compassion, and William tells me that you’ve done good in the world. I believe him, sir. But I tell you plainly that those three things are as irrational as any bed-sheet ghost. It’s because of the scientist in you that you do not know who you are, or that you deny it.”
EIGHT
CORPSE CANDLE
“Suddenly, out in the black night before us, and not two hundred yards away, we heard, at a moment when the wind was silent, the clear note of a human voice…”
Finn laid his magazine on the deal table next to his bed, his mind revolving on sunken galleons and drowned corpses awash on a wave-shattered coast. He wished mightily that he were on that very coast, watching the storm waves crash against the rocky shore and on the lookout for treasures cast up from the sea. He took a bite of the buttery shortcake that Mrs. Langley had brought over earlier today along with a pot of jam, which stood empty, the spoon still in it. He set what was left of the slice onto the oilcloth, carefully wiped his hands on his trousers, and studied the covers of his collection of Cornhill Magazine, eight copies in all so far. The Professor had passed them on to him, which sometimes meant within two or three days of the arrival of the magazine, the Professor being a prodigiously quick reader. Finn meant to tackle the stories one at a time, and he favored reading slowly, attending to the pictures along the way, looking back now and then to reread and savor a likely passage. He was in no hurry to finish good things, whether shortcakes or stories, and that was doubly true for “The Merry Men,” which he had undertaken to read through this evening.
The lamp next to his bedside was smoking, and he turned the wick down a trifle, listening to the night breeze rustle the foliage beyond the window. Through the open curtain he could see that the lamps were still lit in the Professor’s house, or, more rightly, in her house – Alice’s house, Mrs. St. Ives – since it had belonged to her old aunt. Surely it wasn’t respectable to think of her as Alice, but he relished the name and repeated it often to himself, and it had come to sound like a variety of beautiful flower to him.
A loneliness welled up within him now, although it was mixed with a draft of happiness, which led him to wonder at the strange good luck that had brought him here, this snug cottage being the first real home he could remember, discounting the wagon-roofed lorry in which he and his mother dwelt during their days traveling with Duffy’s Circus. He thought about his mother, their happy days on the open road, his two threadbare years following her death, living hard in and around Billingsgate where he earned a few coins shucking oysters, as they called it, for Square Davey the oysterman, and summer nights sleeping beneath London Bridge, where he had discovered on a particularly dark evening that a short-bladed oyster knife might shuck the blood out of a man in short order if a person knew just where to put the blade. He had left the man lying in a crimson pool, black in the moon shadow, although whether dead or alive he couldn’t say, because he hadn’t lingered.
Remembering the man made him shudder, and he still had nightmares of the face looming up before him, and the soft voice, “…Come with me now, boy,” – just those five words, and the hand clutching his arm. He had wished the man dead more than once, if it weren’t already so, although doubtless it was a sin to make such a wish. But that was in another lifetime, it seemed to him now, and he was happy to have got out of London and into the countryside. He still possessed the knife, which he kept sharp out of habit.
There was a scratching on the door – predictable old Hodge, wanting company. He stood up from his bed and slipped on his shoes. In the moment that he opened the door, Hodge flew in past his leg, leaping up onto the table and arching his back, looking keenly out into the night.
“What did you see, Hodge?” Finn asked. “It wasn’t that old stoat out and about, was it?” Hodge didn’t answer, but seemed soothed at the sound of Finn’s voice and shifted his interest to the piece of shortcake that lay on the table. The light blinked out in the gallery windows of the big house opposite, the family settling down. Thinking to take in the night air, Finn stepped out through the door, closing it behind him, and stood listening to a nightingale singing in the trees nearby. The Professor had told him that it was only the male bird that sang at night, lonesome and without a mate. So it went for many things, or so his mother had told him. He saw that a fragment of moon rode in the sky, bright enough so that he could see a shifting in the shadows at the edge of the rose garden now – something solid, not a shadow at all. A deer, perhaps?
He walked in that direction as quietly as he could, the shape of the animal revealing itself as the distance shortened – a red deer, right enough, a stag, enormous it seemed to Finn, with a broad set of antlers, eating the roses right off the stems, the scoundrel. It raised its head, looking at him indifferently. Finn picked up a stone and pitched it at the deer, hitting it on the flank. “Go on, sir!” Finn said to it. He had pruned those roses like old Binger had taught him, in such a way as to bring out the blooms. Precious few would be left by tomorrow if every animal in creation had its way with them. “Be off with you!” He shied another stone, a trifle harder, and the deer bolted up the alley in the direction of the road, but almost at once slowed down, w
alking at a leisurely gait, as if to have the last word on the matter.
Finn saw a strange shimmering light then, a faint glow moving among the shadows of the trees, perhaps a man with a muffled lantern…? The deer, seeming to see it also, abruptly skittered sideways, as if pushed by a heavy wind, and in the blink of an eye leapt into the undergrowth and disappeared. Finn realized that the night birds and crickets had fallen silent, although he couldn’t say when it had happened, and he saw that the light wasn’t apparently from a lantern at all, but had the look of moonlight – a circle of hovering mist, which was impossible on this warm, dry night, and there was no moonlight beneath the trees anyway.
Corpse candle, Finn thought. He had seen such a thing before, in the Erith Marshes – dead men abroad at night. He wasn’t overly fond of dead men, or of any sort of ghost, but they were a curiosity, taken rightly, and not a thing to be feared, or so his mother had told him. And in fact his only memory of his grandmother was a memory of her ghost, which had appeared to them one night outside Scarborough, where the circus had set up on a lea above the ocean. He remembered that his mother had wept to see the pale presence standing before them, although he was too young and frightened to understand quite why.
He watched the light, which shifted and changed shape, taking on the appearance of a human figure now, very small, like Tom Thumb adrift in the shadows. Then it expanded, and the figure of a young boy stood there, not quite solid, staring through coal black eyes into the distance, as if through a window that looked into an unseen land. The boy’s mouth hung open, not as if he was speaking, but gaping open like a dead man’s mouth, and his head was canted unnaturally to the side. He had been hanged. Finn could see a narrow band glowing brightly on his neck, where he had taken the weight of the rope. There was a whispering now – Finn heard it distinctly – although it sounded within his head, like a voice in a dream. He couldn’t make out any words, just the whisper of a consciousness mingling with his own, and a sense of sorrow and of someone wandering in a vast darkness.
He heard the jingling of a horse’s bell then, certainly out on the road, and the figure dimmed and disappeared along with the whispering. Finn was happy enough to see it go. Curious, he walked a few steps forward, wondering whether someone was out at night searching for the ghost and how they meant to catch it. He had seen a device once, a mirrored box that was baited with sweets as an attractant – Allsorts, being a favorite among ghosts. Once the ghost entered the box, the mirrors would keep it trapped.
There was the sound of the bell again, quite nearby, but it stopped short this time, someone having silenced it. He took another step forward, hesitant to be seen. There it stood – a wagon, a man sitting in it, dressed in black, the horse also black, so that the wagon and the man and horse and all the trappings were nearly invisible against the darkness of the trees behind them.
The man saw him and nodded by way of greeting. “Come here, boy,” he said in a low voice, gesturing Finn forward with the buggy whip. “Step out into the moonlight so that I can have a look at you.”
Finn stood where he was, preferring the shadows. He could sense that the dead boy was still nearby, perhaps already in the possession of the dark man, who, Finn could see, had a distinct hunch on his back, although his cape and the darkness had hidden before now.
“I’m in a quandary,” the man told him. “I’m looking for the London Road, quickest route. I fear I’ve lost my way in the darkness. I’m not too far out, I hope.”
“No sir,” Finn said, “not too far. There’s a turning half a mile ahead that will take you into Wrotham Heath, and then it’s the right fork and all the way into Greenwich. There’s a coach inn at Wrotham Heath, sir, the Queen’s Rest, which you might be wanting if you’re looking for a room. It’s a tolerable long shift into London starting as late as this.”
It occurred to Finn that there was something off about the man, something bent, perhaps sinister, although it might be the lateness of the hour and the strange quiet that had swallowed the night. He heartily wished that he had stayed indoors with Hodge.
“A long shift is it? I’ll take your word on that. You seem to be a likely lad, answering so quick. I’ll pay you a sovereign to see me to the inn, so that I don’t miss the turning. You can sup there and be home well before dawn if you’re not slow-footed. What do you say to that?”
“I say that I cannot, your honor.”
“And why not?”
Because you have the face of Beelzebub, Finn thought, although he said nothing.
“Two sovereigns, then.”
“No, sir, I cannot.”
“Two sovereigns ain’t enough for a lad like you, is it? Three then, and that’s my best offer.”
The offer was excessive. The man didn’t want his help. He wanted something else, although God knew what. Did Finn know this man? There was something about him, in his features – something aside from his fell presence and the hump on his back. If the moon were a trifle brighter, perhaps it would come to him. He was certain he’d seen him, in London perhaps, along the docks.
“I’m wanted up at the house just now, sir. You can’t miss the turning at Wrotham, though. The sign says ‘Greenwich’ clear enough.”
The man gave him an ill look, as if he would just as soon run him over on the road. Then his face cleared abruptly and he said, “Then I’ll be on my way, boy.” With that he snapped the reins and the horse cantered away, the wagon fading almost at once into the darkness.
“God between us and all harm,” Finn said aloud, crossing himself, and turned away. The ghostly presence had departed with the wagon, and the night birds took up their note in the trees and the crickets in the shrubbery. It came into his mind that he should speak to the Professor. It was tolerably doubtful that the man in the wagon had been idling on the road, contemplating the route to London – black mischief, more likely. As he walked back toward the cottage, however, he saw that the lower rooms of the house were dark, and only a solitary lamp burned upstairs in what was the Professor and Alice’s bedchamber. He pushed open the door to his cottage and found that Hodge was asleep on his bed and the shortcake reduced to crumbs.
NINE
A LANE TO THE LAND OF THE DEAD
Mother Laswell looked slightly abashed, as if she had overreached herself. She turned the magic mirror on its base, the polished surface reflecting the candlelight. “I beg your forgiveness,” she said. “I don’t mean to speak slightingly of you.”
“I find your words wholly complimentary,” St. Ives said. “And perhaps no man can know himself entirely. Pray continue. Leave nothing out.”
“Aye,” Kraken said. “Speak your heart.”
“I’m nearly through it, Professor, and just as well. I don’t relish calling it up. It fell out that they took my Edward’s body to the laboratory, where my husband… where my husband removed the head. It was then, or so I speculate, that he had Narbondo drag the corpse to the river to dispose of it, leaving the bloody knife as a piece of false evidence. Narbondo, clever boy that he was, disposed of the body in his own way. He wanted a corpse of his own to work on, you see, and the cost of a body as fresh as Edward’s was too dear. He hid Edward’s corpse in a garden shed and locked the door, visiting his brother in his spare moments thereafter, learning what he could of human anatomy. In the weeks that followed the murder, with Narbondo as a pupil, my husband fabricated a lamp from Edward’s skull – the sort that John Mason had been at work on, but hadn’t sufficient skill to contrive. My husband had taken photographs of Edward some time back. His aversion to sentimentality made me wonder at his motives at the time. He always had a motive, you see. He did nothing but with an eye toward gain.
“I became increasingly certain that he and his acolyte were responsible for Edward’s death, and one afternoon, when I could stand it no longer, I made my way to the laboratory and surprised him at his work. It sounds insane for me to say that I knew my own son’s skull when I saw it sitting atop a copper-sheathed table, but I di
d know it. It was no longer a mere skull, for he had completed his work upon it, to my horror. Beside it lay a notebook written out in my husband’s clear hand. He had kept a record of his experimentations, as if he had been dissecting a cat.
“I confronted him with the murder, and he was quite bold in telling me to look to my own progeny if I needed a party to blame. The deformity, he told me, was in my own seed. I knew then that Edward had been murdered by his brother. My husband wasn’t a timid man. He would happily have admitted to the crime if he had committed it. I gestured at Edward’s skull, turned into God knew what. ‘You would use him this way?’ I asked my husband. ‘Your own son?’ ‘He’s no longer my son,’ my husband said to me. ‘He’s dead. A mere corpse. And as for using him, my intention is to compel his ghost to remain among the living. You can thank me for that, for I believe that I’ve succeeded. I can summon him for you, if you’d like.’
“I was suddenly quite certain that he meant to murder me into the bargain, and I determined to impede his efforts now, since I had been dead in spirit for a very long time, and at that moment actual death seemed far more reasonable than life. I picked up a heavy glass cube with both hands and smashed it down onto my husband’s head when he foolishly turned away, knocking him to the ground. And there he stayed, perhaps dead, although I scarcely believed it at the time. I snatched up Edward’s skull and looked about for a place to hide it, because I meant to take it with me if I won free. It was a thing of horror, but it was all that was left to me. There was no place, however, that was safe, and so I pitched that glass cube through the window and the skull after it, watching as it rolled into the greenery on the banks of the little stream that runs down along the top of the farm. Then I snatched up the notebook and slipped it beneath my bodice. I began to smash things generally, then, caught up in a growing rage for what my husband had done, and in the smashing I knocked over a lamp, which cast burning oil on a heap of crates and papers and set the place alight. Good, I thought. I’ll burn him to death.
The Aylesford Skull Page 7