by C. S. Harris
“And after his father died, did Mick continue togging?”
“Oh, no, yer honor. He never went down in them sewers again. Just the thought of it was enough to make him turn all pale-like and start to shake.”
“So how did he live?”
Jem looked away toward the Middlesex Sessions House at the far end of the green. “This ’n’ that, I s’pose. Same as anybody else.”
“Did he ever pick pockets?”
Jeb stared at Sebastian with wide, studiously guileless eyes. “Oh, no, yer honor.”
“Of course not,” said Sebastian dryly. “But if he found, say, a pocket handkerchief on Clerkenwell Green, where would he take it?”
Jem screwed his mouth into a scowl, as if weighing the benefits of telling the truth against the risks of lying.
“Tell me,” said Sebastian in the stern voice that had once commanded men in battle.
The boy’s grimy fist tightened around Sebastian’s sorely abused handkerchief. “The Professor. Mick was a big favorite with the Professor.”
• • •
Icarus Cantrell was putting a kettle on the fire in the back room of his shop when Sebastian walked in.
“You keep coming here,” said the old man, straightening with the slowness of aged joints aching in cold weather.
“Your name keeps coming up. Why is that, do you think?”
“In many ways, Clerkenwell is still a small village.”
Sebastian laid Mick Swallow’s piece of eight on the well-scrubbed kitchen table that stood between them.
Cantrell went very still. “Where did you find that?”
“In a shallow grave on the grounds of the old shot factory. I take it you know who it belonged to?”
The Professor picked up the old coin with gentle fingers. “He was a sweet boy, Mick. His mother died when he was just three. Jack Swallow had nothing else to do with the lad, so he used to take him down in the sewers with him from the time Mick was a little tyke. Mick practically grew up down there.” He shook his head sadly. “The boy was never quite the same after Jack was killed right in front of him.”
“You knew Mick had disappeared?”
“Of course I knew.”
“So why didn’t you tell me about him?”
Icarus Cantrell set the coin back on the table. “What do you think? That I’m the one killing these children?”
“You do seem to be acquainted with all of them.”
The Professor turned away to fuss with the preparation of his teapot. “There’s a lad you might want to talk to,” he said without looking around. “Last winter, he was over by the Charterhouse one evening when a gentleman pulled him into a coach and forced him to drink what I suspect was a powerful dose of laudanum. What happened to him after that sounds a great deal like what you say was done to Benji. The difference is, Hamish managed to escape.”
Sebastian felt a quickening of interest reined in by the suspicion that Icarus Cantrell was in some way he couldn’t define toying with him. “Once again, I can’t help but wonder why you kept this to yourself until now.”
The old man poured the boiling water into a simple brown teapot. “Because I respect what’s told to me in confidence and I didn’t have the lad’s permission to tell you what happened to him. Now I do.”
“Where is he?”
“He left Clerkenwell shortly after it happened. He was afraid the man might find him again and kill him.”
“Does he know the man’s identity?”
“No.”
“Yet he must know something—what the man looks like, surely, and where he was taken.”
Cantrell set the heavy kettle aside. “I asked if he’d be willing to talk to you. He’s frightened, but he has agreed.”
“When? Where?”
The Professor glanced out the window at the cold blue sky. “Come back in two hours. He’ll be here.”
Chapter 33
The skinny, ragged boy sat huddled on a low, rush-bottomed stool beside the fire in the back room of Icarus Cantrell’s shop. He was a wiry lad with a head of thick dark hair, a tense, closed face, and haunted hazel eyes. He said his name was Hamish McCormick and he’d be fifteen years old on All Souls’ Day.
“I don’t like talkin’ about this,” he said when Sebastian settled on a nearby bench.
“I understand.”
The boy gave him a long, hard look. “Do ye?”
Sebastian met Hamish’s gaze and knew that he could never begin to understand either what this boy had been through or the nightmares that must haunt him still. “Thank you for agreeing to speak with me.”
The boy blinked and looked away.
Sebastian said, “The Professor tells me a man in a carriage grabbed you a year or so ago. Do you remember the date?”
“No. Not sure I ever knew it. It weren’t long after Christmas, though.”
“What did the man look like?”
The boy scrubbed his hands down over his face. “I dunno. Whenever I think about it, all I can see is his hands ’n’ his eyes. The rest o’ him . . . it’s just a blur.”
Sebastian had to work to keep the disappointment out of his voice. “Tell me about his hands.”
A faint trembling shivered the boy’s thin frame. “They was white. Soft.”
“A gentleman’s hands?”
Hamish nodded, his throat working as he swallowed. “He was a swell, all right. Talked real fine, he did. Liked t’ hear himself talk, I reckon.”
“How old was he?”
“I dunno.” He studied Sebastian thoughtfully. “Older’n you. How old’re you?”
“I’m thirty. You say you remember his eyes?”
“They was like nothin’ I ever seen. Ye look at him, ’n’ it’s like yer peerin’ into the heart o’ hell.”
“What color were they?”
Hamish began to rock back and forth on his stool, hugging himself. “When I think about ’em, they’re red. But that can’t be, can it?”
Sebastian suspected the boy’s memories of that night were colored by the opium he’d been forced to drink as well as by the horror of the experience. And he began to wonder how much Hamish would actually be able to help him. “Tell me about when the man grabbed you.”
Hamish went very still. It was as if he were drawing into himself, bracing himself against the horror of remembrance. “I was with Paddy Gantry. We was walkin’ down by Charterhouse Square.”
“Who’s Paddy Gantry?”
“He’s jist a boy.”
“Did the gentleman take him too?”
Hamish shook his head. “Paddy ran.”
“Do you think Paddy would be willing to talk to me?”
“Ain’t nobody seen him since that winter.”
Sebastian thought about the shot factory’s silent, overgrown graves and nameless skeletons. “You think the gentleman might have grabbed him too? Perhaps later?”
“I dunno. Sometimes I wonder if maybe—” Hamish broke off and shook his head.
“Wonder what?” Sebastian prompted.
Hamish rolled one shoulder and stared out the window at the gathering darkness.
Sebastian tried a different tack. “You say the man pulled you into a carriage. Do you remember what the carriage looked like?”
“Only that it was old. Fusty smellin’. Like one o’ them hackney coaches ye see that used t’ belong t’ some grand lord a hundred years ago ’n’ more.”
“There was a driver?”
“I suppose there musta been. But I don’t remember him.”
“Where did the gentleman take you?”
Hamish started rocking again. “A house.”
“Tell me about it.”
“It was an old farmhouse or somethin’.”
“What was it made of? Brick? St
one?”
Hamish shook his head. “It was a white and black.”
“It was half-timbered?”
“Aye. Reminded me o’ that old tavern near the corner o’ Liquorpond Street and Grays Inn Lane. Ye know the one I mean? Where the top story sticks out over the ground floor at each end but not in the middle?”
“You mean the Cat’s Tail?”
“That’s it.”
Although long used as a tavern, the old Cat’s Tail in Liquorpond Street had actually been built centuries before as a farmhouse. A distinctive type of construction that dated back to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, such houses were once the homes of yeomen farmers, with a medieval-style central hall open to the rafters and flanked by two-story, jettied bays. Surely there couldn’t be many such houses left on the outskirts of London?
Sebastian said, “What happened at the house, Hamish?”
The boy squeezed his eyes shut, his voice dropping to a scratchy whisper. “Ye cain’t tell nobody. Promise me ye won’t tell nobody.”
“My word as a gentleman,” said Sebastian, then decided his use of the expression was unfortunate, given what a gentleman had done to this wretched, impoverished child. “What happened, Hamish?”
Hamish sucked in a jerky breath that flared his nostrils. “He . . . he took me t’ this big room. Upstairs, it was.”
“What did the room look like?”
“It didn’t have much in it—jist an old wooden bed ’n’ a table, ’n’ chains sunk into the wall like some old dungeon.” The boy bowed his head, his chin to his chest, his gaze on his bare feet, his voice dropping to little more than a whisper. “I didn’t know people did the sort o’ stuff he done t’ me there. I never done him nothin’; so why’d he want t’ hurt me?”
“You’ve heard what happened to Benji Thatcher?”
Hamish nodded. He did not look up.
“Is that what happened to you?”
Hamish nodded again.
Sebastian said, “How did you manage to escape?”
The boy fiddled with the frayed hem of his coat. “All the while he was hurtin’ me, he kept shoutin’ at me. He was mad ’cause I was so woozy—I reckon on account o’ that stuff he made me drink. It was like a part o’ me was there, but the important bits o’ me wasn’t. Like I could just go away inside me head ’n’ forget what he was doin’ t’ me for long stretches at a time. He kept tellin’ me t’ wake up, sayin’ it weren’t no fun for him if I weren’t enjoyin’ it.” A look of horror mingled with helpless confusion convulsed the boy’s features. “As if anybody could enjoy what he was doin’ t’ me. In the end he got so mad he left, tellin’ me he’d be back in the mornin’.”
“He locked you in that room?”
Hamish nodded. “Left me tied up to one of the bedposts.”
“So how did you get away?”
The boy rubbed his thumbs over his wrists, which Sebastian now saw were thick with purple scars. “You know how a fox’ll gnaw off its own foot t’ get out a trap? Well, I decided even if I had t’ chew off me own hands, that cove wasn’t gonna find me there in the mornin’. Not alive. Took me the better part o’ the night, but I finally got them ropes off me. Then I shimmied out the window as quick and quiet as I could. I was too scared t’ take the time even t’ grab me clothes.”
“Did you look back at the house when you were running away?”
“Maybe once. I dunno. Why?”
“Can you remember anything more about it? Were there any outbuildings?”
“Aye, a whole jumble of ’em—corn barn ’n’ poultry house ’n’ dovecot ’n’ such.”
“Whitewashed?”
The boy thought for a moment. “I don’t think so. Gray stone, meybe. They was mostly fallin’ down.”
“Do you know where it was?”
Hamish shook his head. “I jist ran across the fields. I didn’t know where I was goin’. All I could think about was gettin’ away from there. When the sun started comin’ up, I hid under a haystack ’n’ fell asleep. It was afternoon by the time I woke up.”
“Where were you?”
“Not far outside Islington. At first I was so confused, I thought meybe it’d all been a bad dream. But I knew it wasn’t ’cause I hurt so bad.”
“What did you do then?”
Hamish cast a quick glance toward the front of the shop, where Icarus Cantrell was busy winding the dozen or so clocks he kept clustered on a shelf near the door. “I waited till it got dark again, ’n’ then I come here to the Professor. He helped me get better. And then he told me it’d be better if I stayed away from Clerkenwell and anybody I knew.”
“Because of the gentleman?”
Hamish nodded.
“Did you ever see Paddy Gantry again?”
“Nah. I went lookin’ fer him. I wanted t’ ask why the blazes he didn’t try t’ help me when that cove grabbed me, or at least run ’n’ tell somebody what’d happened. But I couldn’t find him.”
“That’s when he disappeared?”
Hamish nodded.
Sebastian said, “What do you think happened to him?”
The boy twitched one shoulder. “I reckon that cove got him next.”
Sebastian said, “Can you remember anything else—anything at all—about the gentleman or his carriage or the house that might be useful?”
The boy shook his head.
“Did the man by chance have a faint French accent?”
Hamish looked at him blankly. “Don’t know as I can say. Ain’t never heard that many grand swells, French or otherwise.”
“Do you remember anything else he said?”
“I dunno. He talked real queer.”
“What do you mean?”
“Some of the things he said; they made no sense.”
“Such as?”
“Well, he kept tellin’ me the only way t’ get to pleasure is through pain. What kind of nonsense is that? And then another time, he sticks his face up against mine ’n’ says, ‘Did you ever imagine what it would be like to snatch the sun from the sky? Now, that would be a crime.’” The boy’s face convulsed again in silent horror. “Who talks like that?”
“Sounds like the Marquis de Sade,” said Sebastian, half to himself.
“You think that’s the cove’s name?”
“De Sade? No; last I heard, de Sade was in an asylum somewhere in France.”
“So meybe he got loose somehow ’n’ come over here.”
“He’s quite aged—probably in his seventies by now.”
“Then it ain’t him,” said Hamish, obviously disappointed. He studied Sebastian through narrowed eyes. “The Professor, he said if’n I was t’ tell ye everythin’ then meybe you’d be able t’ get the swell what’s been doin’ this.”
“I intend to try.”
“You’ll kill him?”
Sebastian met the boy’s gaze and saw the tumult of fear, shame, and fierce determination that roiled within him. “If I have to.”
“You need to kill him,” said the boy with sudden vehemence. “They’ll never hang a grand swell like him.”
“Even peers of the realm can be hanged for murder,” said Sebastian. Yet even as he said it, it occurred to him that Jarvis would never allow someone as useful as the comte de Brienne to be arrested. And no jury would convict a man as well connected as Ashworth without an impossible level of proof.
Hamish thrust up from his stool, his face held tight, his breath coming hard and fast. “They don’t hang fer hurtin’ boys like me,” he said and ran from the cottage into the gloaming of the day.
Chapter 34
“So, do you still consider me a suspect?”
Icarus Cantrell asked the question as he and Sebastian sat facing each other across the worn, scrubbed surface of the Professor’s kitchen table. Two tankards
of ale rested on the boards between them; a small fire glowed on the nearby hearth, chasing away the chill of the coming night.
Sebastian took a long, slow swallow of ale. “You’ve definitely slipped toward the bottom of my list.”
Cantrell looked startled for a moment. Then his eyes tightened with a smile he hid by raising his own tankard to drink deeply.
Sebastian said, “Why did Hamish come to you when he escaped that farmhouse?”
“Where else was he to go?” The Professor shifted his weight on the hard bench. “He was grievously hurt. Not only had he been flogged, brutalized, and cut, but his wrists and hands were a wretched mess from chewing his way out of his bonds. It’s amazing he survived. I’ve always suspected the man who abused him assumed the boy had died in a ditch somewhere after running away. It was a very cold December night.”
“You didn’t contact the authorities?”
Cantrell snorted. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Hatton Garden Public Office isn’t exactly interested in the welfare of the area’s street children. Constable Gowan might have been more sympathetic, but Hamish begged me not to tell anyone. When a boy lives on the street, he can’t afford to have word of something like that getting out about him.”
“It wasn’t his fault.”
“Doesn’t matter. You know what people are like.”
Sebastian shook his head, but not in disagreement. “He’s an amazingly resourceful lad.”
Cantrell’s breath eased out in a heavy sigh. “He’s never been the same since, I’m afraid. You don’t get over an experience like that. It would change anyone, let alone a homeless orphan of fourteen.”
The two men sat in silence for a moment. Then Sebastian said, “Hamish makes seven that we know for certain: Seven boys and girls this twisted bastard has snatched off the streets.”
Cantrell looked puzzled. “Seven?”
“Hamish, Mick Swallow, Benji and Sybil Thatcher, and the three unknowns we found buried at the shot factory.”
“We don’t know that he’s killed Sybil.”
“No. But if he hasn’t, then where is she?”
“She is younger than the others.”
“True. But I’m not convinced that’s significant.”