The Hellfire Conspiracy

by Will Thomas

  “You may complain at the time of the reckoning, when I present your bill. Until then, I am in charge and I’m saying you must come with me.”

  DeVere splashed more wine into his goblet and drank it. Then he was back to the finger pointing. This time, he pointed at me.

  “You,” he said, looking at me with bleary red eyes. “You look like an educated chappy. How many circles of Hell are there?”

  I glanced at my employer nervously. “I believe there were nine, according to Dante.”

  The major shook his head with his eyes closed and a smile on his face. A laugh escaped his lips. “Eleven, there are eleven.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s the one I’m in now. You didn’t read about that one in old Dante, did you? And then, there’s the really, really deep one where they put all the blasted, thieving, useless private enquiry agents!”

  He tried to fill his glass again, but the bottle was finally empty. He looked at it woefully. “I keep pouring this stuff down my throat, hoping for release. The damned publican must be watering it down. I’m sorry. I just want oblivion.”

  “If it’s oblivion you want—” Barker said suddenly, his fist coming up under the major’s chin, jarring him with the blow. DeVere dropped into his arms like a sack of potatoes. My employer hoisted the major onto his right shoulder and turned to me. “Go downstairs and settle the bill.”

  I don’t believe we had been in the building more than five minutes, and now Barker was leaving with DeVere on his shoulders. I had expected a protracted argument, but Barker had a more expedient method of getting a drunken, angry man out of a public house.

  “Where to now, sir?” the cabman asked, once I’d paid DeVere’s bill and we were all ensconced in the carriage.

  “Fulham,” Barker growled.

  “That’s clear ’cross town, sir!”

  “Then you had better not dawdle. I’ll make it worth your time.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I suppose this has turned out as well as could be expected,” the Guv said. “There was a chance he would go back to his barracks and blow his brains out.”

  The major came to halfway through the journey.

  “Where the hell am I?” he asked.

  “You are going home to sleep,” Barker told him. “Tomorrow morning, you’re going to bury your wife and daughter.”

  DeVere sat and stared as the carriage rolled down the street. I wasn’t certain whether he’d taken the words in until he spoke again a minute or two later.

  “I’m gonna be flogged for this or court-martialed. Or both.”

  Neither Barker nor I vouchsafed a remark, but DeVere was suddenly garrulous. “You—you’re gonna catch this blackguard and make him pay, aren’t you?”

  “I have every intention of doing so.”

  “Gwendolyn…my little Gwendolyn. Used to rock her on my knee, you know.”

  “You owe it to her memory to be at her graveside, sober.”

  “Have you ever lost a child, Mr. Barker?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever lost a wife?”

  Barker didn’t respond. My jaw dropped. DeVere, drunk as he was, didn’t notice and continued. “Then don’t dictate terms to me. I’m paying for the bloody funeral and I’m going to be there. Now leave off.”

  We arrived at the DeVere residence. The butler, a capable man who looked like he might have seen military before domestic service, met us and helped his master from the vehicle, issuing orders to the maids for a pot of coffee and a hot bath. We left the arrangements for DeVere’s appearance in the man’s capable hands. On the way back to Bethnal Green, Barker was back to his normal self, watching traffic and turning over aspects of the case, but I pondered the unanswered question in my heart.

  18

  I SUPPOSE, SOMEWHERE, THERE IS SUCH A THING as an enjoyable funeral. Someone lived a long life, prospered, was revered and loved and was finally ready to greet his Maker once more. His mourners would say, “He lived his life wisely and we will miss him; but he was old. It was his time to die.” He might even have been buried in the same cemetery as the one in which Gwendolyn DeVere and her mother were laid to rest the next morning, but this funeral gave no comfort to anyone, for Gwendolyn had been murdered and her mother had taken her life.

  I’ve been to a lot of funerals for one lifetime. In my line of work, death is like a crow that sits upon one’s shoulder or hovers over one’s head, but this remained in my mind for years afterward. What I recall is the fine weather that Wednesday and the look of shock on the faces of all the participants. It was a day for picnicking in Hyde Park, for playing badminton or rowing on the river, and yet we were here witnessing two coffins being laid in the earth and wishing bon voyage to two souls. The sun gave no health or life; it merely accentuated the deaths of two who would still have been alive if we, Barker and I, had only been a little more diligent, if we had only known the right course of action.

  DeVere looked as if he had shriveled. His mind seemed to be floating somewhere in the clouds as the service was read. He was not alone. All of us—the unnamed relatives, the ladies and gentlemen who worked at the Charity Organization Society, the Life Guards who stood in silent sympathy with their comrade, and the husbands and wives who knew the DeVeres—stood about looking slightly deflated and out of focus, like dispirited statues. After the rites, in that bright, unnatural sunshine, everyone hemmed and hawed, said the proper thing to the major, and drifted off, their summer day spoiled by this close brush against the sleeve of the specter of Death. There would be no gathering at the home.

  Stephen and Rose Carrick came up to us after the funeral.

  “How is the investigation coming?” he asked.

  “The girl has been found, as you can see,” the Guv said. “Now all that remains is to track down her killer.”

  “I hear he’s killed more than once.”

  “He has, but he will not kill again,” Barker stated.

  “How do you know?” Mrs. Carrick spoke up, looking over her shoulder at the newly turned earth. “He is still out there somewhere.”

  “Because he knows I’m breathing down the back of his neck. He’ll try again; he is compelled to. But then I’ll have him.”

  Carrick opened his mouth to say something, then shut it again. “Good,” he finally said and moved away. I was at a loss for words myself.

  We found DeVere and gave him our condolences. Once through the lych-gate and into the lane, Barker and I settled our crepe-banded hats back upon our heads.

  “At least,” the Guv said, “they allowed Mrs. DeVere to be buried alongside her daughter. Fifty years ago, it would have been forbidden to bury her in consecrated ground.”

  “Do you really think she killed herself, sir?” I asked. “She was full of laudanum already. Perhaps she woke up and forgot she’d taken any. Perhaps she just took another dose.”

  “The whole bottle?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. She was half out of her mind and drugged.”

  “Perhaps,” my employer conceded, if only to make me feel better. “In either case, we shall never know.”

  “I put the blame on Miacca’s shoulders. She’d still be alive if it weren’t for him. We’ve got to find him.”

  “We shall,” Barker stated. “He wants to be found. These letters—‘catch me if you can’—are cries for attention. The man wants to be infamous. At some point in his life, perhaps very early, his brain began to warp the way a plant sometimes does. It twisted and grew in upon itself, and now we must pull it up by its roots before it infects others, if it is not too late.”

  Barker stepped up into his cab while I climbed atop my perch behind. Our mare, Juno, had been tricked out with a black ostrich feather. The Guv beat upon the trap and I opened it.

  “Shall we have lunch?”

  “I am not hungry,” I replied.

  “You are oversensitive. It is not good to miss a meal just before a bout. You are in training.”
/>   “If I get peckish, I’ll eat something out of the hamper,” I said.

  We rode back to Newington to change out of our mourning clothes and to take Juno back to the stable. The house looked forlorn without us, and the rooms had a musty smell. Mac had covered the furniture in the ground floor rooms with sheets, which depressed me, as if we were the ones who had been buried. I took Juno to the stable and saw her brushed down before I walked back down the New Kent Road and entered through the back gate. In the garden, cicadas whined like small machines in the summer sunshine. They contributed to the headache I was getting.

  Cyrus Barker had not said what I expected of him: that the DeVere women were not lying there in the ground but were in heaven. Perhaps like me, he was raging at how unfair it all was. We had to find this monster, or nothing—not the daffodils that grew in spring or the stars moving slowly in space vast distances away—would ever be the same.

  An hour later, we were finally in Bethnal Green. Mac had cajoled me into taking a plate of food he’d prepared, but the best I could do was nibble a few olives and a cracker. Barker tucked in, as usual. He is rarely put off his food. Mac had just brought the water for tea to a boil when we heard the squeak of the door downstairs. We all froze and looked at one another. Someone was in the building.

  Then we heard another sound, a kind of squealing. I might even say caterwauling. I sat up from my seat on the mattress, and Barker put down his plate. Mac took the kettle off the stove. The sound continued, coming up the stair. What fresh intrusion was this? I wondered.

  It was a street girl, as it turned out, struggling between Soho Vic and another pug-nosed boy. They held her by the shoulders and ankles, but she was giving them the worst of it, I noticed. Both lads had scratches on their faces, and Vic’s shirt was rent at the shoulder.

  “Pipe down, girl!” he told her, holding his hand over her mouth. “Can’t you see you’re in the presence of a gentleman?”

  She shook her head loose from his filthy grasp. They dropped her unceremoniously on the floor. She was an urchin of about ten years old, with short dark hair and a dirty face, clad in a ragged dress and pinafore and ill-fitting shoes.

  “’E don’t look like no gentl’man I ever saw,” she mumbled, looking at the Guv.

  “Good afternoon, Vic,” my employer said, ignoring the girl’s comment. “To what do we owe this interruption?”

  “This young lady, I believe, is in the employ of a Certain Person, an evil personage, if you take my meanin’, and has been follerin’ you about.”

  “Is this true, young lady?” Barker demanded. “Have you been following us?”

  The girl clapped her hands over her ears. “I don’t know nuffin’, I ain’t sayin’ nuffin’.”

  “A very wise course, to be sure. Won’t you have a seat?”

  “Where? You ain’t got but the mattress,” she said, looking about. “I thought gents lived in big houses wif moats and such.”

  “Never mind about that. What is your name?”

  “That’s my business,” she said defensively. I thought perhaps she was being cheeky, but now I began to wonder if she was actually frightened—and I didn’t mean by Barker.

  Vic wasn’t going to stand for insolence and slapped the back of the girl’s head.

  “Hold your tongue, you. Sorry, Push. She ain’t one o’ mine. I’da taught her manners.”

  “That’s all right, Vic.” He turned to the butler. “Mac, perhaps our guest would care for some tea and biscuits.”

  The girl still looked anxious but reluctantly moved forward when Mac opened the large wicker hamper. The two boys were interested, as well. In minutes, he had set out an impromptu picnic on the floor with the children sitting cross-legged around the basket. Even Vic could not resist the charms of the hamper.

  “Esme,” the girl murmured around a mouthful of cheese and biscuits. “My name is Esme.”

  “Is that short for Esmeralda?” Barker asked.

  “’At’s roit. Esmeralda Foster.”

  “I see. Where is your family, Esme?”

  “Ain’t got one. Got a bruvver, but ’e’s in the workhouse. I din’t wanna go, so I’m on me own.”

  “Tell me about the man you work for, Esme.”

  “Cain’t.”

  “Has he threatened you?”

  “Worse than life, but that ain’t the reason. I never seen ’im. ’E allus talks to me from a dark alley. First time, ’e threw a sack over me head and carried me there. He’s wicked evil. Ever since then, I’ve met ’im in the same alley off Collingwood Street.”

  “How does he pay you, then?” my employer asked.

  “’E don’t pay me. I do it so I don’t get et. ’E’s one o’ them cannibals. Said I couldn’t get away from ’im no matter where I run and that ’e’d eat me for certain if I weren’t a good girl. Showed me ’is jar, he did.”

  “Jar?” Barker said, looking my way.

  “Yes, ’is jar. Full o’ pickled fingers and such. Bit like Madame Tussaud’s Chamber o’ Horrors, I reckon, though I never been there.”

  “How many…items would you say were in the jar?”

  “More’n I can count.”

  “I see. How many days have you been following us?”

  “Three,” she replied.

  “Three days. You are to be congratulated, young lady. I would not have thought I could be followed for three days without noticing it.”

  She smiled between bites of cheese. “Got real close to yer in the charity, sir. No one notices a small girl like me.”

  “Apparently not. And you went back every night to report to this man?”

  “Yes, sir. Daren’t otherwise.”

  “Did he ever give you his name?”

  “Miacca, sir.”

  “Was his voice deep?” the Guv probed.

  “Not like yers. Leastways, it was deep enough to know it were a man.”

  “What do you suppose will happen to you, now that you’ve told me everything?”

  “I’ll be et, sir, et for sure,” the girl said, giving a shudder.

  “Not if he doesn’t know.”

  “Oh, he’ll know, all right. Prob’ly knows already. ’E knows everything that goes on in the Green. ‘His garden,’ he called it. I’m for it, now. I been bad, you see. As long as I was good, he’d let me live. Gave me a sovereign for being good. It weren’t a payment. I earned it by not being bad. I don’t thieve or go with men like some other girls. I sell flars.”

  “Flars?” I asked, horrified at what she’d been through.

  “Yeah, you know. Roses and such. I promised my bruvver I’d keep me nose clean.”

  The door down below squeaked again, and Esme was up at once. Unfortunately, there was nowhere for her to go. She ran around the room and finally folded herself up tightly in a corner with her arms around her head. As the footsteps came up the stairs, I reached for the pistol I kept between the wall and the mattress. I needn’t have bothered. It was only Jenkins.

  “Is this a party?” he asked, looking at us all. Vic and his friend had made inroads into the hamper, and now had crumbs around their mouths.

  “You have another message?” Barker asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Jenkins said, reaching into his pocket, extracting a dirty envelope.

  “I knew it! I knew it! He knows!” Esme Foster cried from across the room. “’E’ll eat me for sure. ’Oo’s gonner tell Bill in the workhouse that I been et?”

  “I shall not allow you to be eaten, Miss Foster. You are under my protection now.”

  He tore open the envelope with a thick finger and perused the third letter from Miacca. I watched his eyes move as he scanned the lines. Then he dismissed it with a shake of his head and passed it to me.

  Poor old Push is full of rage

  Reading this indignant page.

  Don’t he know that in our time

  Loving children’s not a crime?

  I’m going on a killing spree

  And as I said, you can’t c
atch me.

  Smite your doors with cane malacca

  It does no good.

  Mr. Miacca.

  “A spree,” I noted, but Barker held up a hand. We were not to speak in front of the girl. I leaned over and spoke low in his ear.

  “This has been cribbed, sir. I know I’ve read ‘this indignant page’ somewhere before.”

  “Then go to the Reading Room again and keep a close eye behind you.”

  “If he knows Esme has been given into our hands, he might try to follow, sir,” I continued.

  “It would appear so, lad, but that doesn’t change anything.”

  “What about the children? I mean, what will happen to Esme?”

  “I’m taking her to Andrew McClain. He’ll be able to find someone who can care for her.”

  “Mr. L.?” Jenkins said, interrupting us. “I’ve got a message for you as well.”

  “What?” I asked, getting a sudden chill. “From Miacca?”

  “No, sir. It’s from your friend Zangwill. He says he needs to speak to you urgently and will be at the usual place.”

  19

  THE “USUAL PLACE” OF WHICH ISRAEL SPOKE was the Barbados coffeehouse of Cornhill, the City, or to be more precise, Saint Michael’s Alley, where much of London’s coffee is first stored. Israel and I met there often to talk about life, literature, and women, though not necessarily in that order.

  When the cab arrived, I jumped down and ran in the door.

  “Black Apollo,” I called to the proprietor, who always looks as if I had disarrayed his plans merely by showing up. A black Apollo was a large cup of strong black coffee, the house specialty.

  “Thomas!” Israel called from one of the high-backed booths that had been built in the 1680s. He looked the same as always: hatchet-faced, with far too much nose and not enough chin. He was wearing his spectacles because the chances were remote that he would be under female scrutiny there.

  “Hello, Israel,” I said, sliding into the booth across from him. “I’m in a bit of a hurry today. What’s going on?”

  “We’ve got something on tonight, if you’re interested. In fact, I really must insist you attend.”