by Alex Grecian
The room began swimming again, and Hammersmith grabbed the table behind him to keep from passing out.
INTERLUDE 2
PYWORTHY, HOLSWORTHY DISTRICT, DEVON, THREE YEARS EARLIER.
Wake up, Constable!”
Walter Day heard the voice as though from a great distance and struggled toward it. He opened his eyes, immediately felt an ice-pick stab of light, and closed them again. After the briefest moment, a shadow blocked the light and he was able to open his eyes again. The shadow resolved itself into Claire Carlyle’s lovely face. She seemed concerned, and Day tried to reach for her, to comfort her, but he couldn’t move.
“Walter? Can you hear me?”
Seeing Claire, knowing she was alive and well, gave him strength. He had known Claire for most of his life and had admired her from afar, but had always understood that she was too good for him. She came from money, and he was the son of a valet. He was almost surprised that she knew his name.
He blinked and found his voice. It sounded far away, as if someone else were speaking.
“I’m awake,” he said. “Don’t worry about me.” It came out Doane wurbit meeh.
“Oh, thank God. The inspector said you would recover, but I was afraid … Your head’s bleeding horribly, you know.”
“I’m okay.” M’uh kay.
He could feel his arms and legs now, heavy and useless, but it was an improvement. He moved his head and saw that he was lying flat on his back on a church pew.
“What’s happened?”
“Mr Sanders hit you.”
“Where is he?” Day said. Whurzee?
“He ran right out after he hit you in the head.”
“Where’s Inspector March?”
“He chased after Mr Sanders. But he stopped first to be sure you were breathing.”
Day worked one marionette arm and grabbed the top of the pew. His body gradually came unstuck and he pulled himself up. The air in the church’s nave smelled hot and dusty and he wanted to lie back down, but he fought the temptation and stood on wobbly legs. Blue and yellow light streamed through the stained-glass windows around them and pressed painfully on Day’s eyeballs. His stomach churned and he swallowed hard.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Fine. I’m fine.”
The world began to come into focus. The inside of his head was a rock tumbler and his legs still wanted to quit under him, but every second that passed brought a little more resolve. Day touched his temple and stifled the urge to cry out. When he looked at his fingers, there was blood on them.
“You say Sanders hit me?”
Day looked down at the pew. A broken pitchfork lay on the floor beneath it, the two halves of the handle splintered. He realized that his skull must have sustained a terrific blow. It explained why he couldn’t remember anything that had happened since he’d entered the church. He could remember chasing the impostor stable hand, Sanders. He remembered Sanders grabbing Claire, snatching her right off her feet and dragging her into the church. Day had given chase and then…
Then he had opened his eyes here in the nave.
“You saved me,” Claire said.
“Of course I did. I love you.”
“You do?”
Day blinked. Had he spoken out loud?
“What?” he said.
“Perhaps you should sit back down.”
“No. I need to help the inspector.”
“He has had years and years of experience in catching the likes of Rex Sanders.”
“Still…”
“I love you, too, Walter Day.”
Day sat. He closed his eyes and inhaled slowly, exhaled, and then drew another breath. When he opened his eyes again, she was still there. He looked away, at the high windows in the clerestory above them. A shadow flitted past, blocking the sun, a pitter-pat of feet on the roof. There was a dreamy quality to the air, and when Day spoke, his voice seemed to him to come from somewhere else.
“Marry me,” he said.
Claire drew back from him.
“Your injury…”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I…”
“No, don’t be sorry.”
“Entirely inappropriate of me. Percy Erwood has his eye on you, I know. It’s an excellent match.”
“I can’t stand Percy Erwood. I can’t stand any of the men my father wants for me. They’re all spoiled little boys who care for nobody but themselves. They love their money and they love the way other people look at them. I am not an accessory.”
“Yes, Erwood’s an excellent match,” Day said. “My head is simply … Again, I apologize most sincerely and I hope you’ll mention nothing of this to your father.”
He stood again and lurched past her, out into the center aisle. He stumbled, regained his footing, and walked steadily past the sanctuary and out the back door into the vestibule. When he looked back through the small window in the door, Claire was standing by the far pews under a stained-glass window, blue light shimmering in her hair. She wasn’t looking in his direction, hadn’t watched him leave. He wasn’t sure he would ever be able to speak to her again.
Outside, he took a moment, leaned his hand against the cool stone of the church wall. Far away, across the marshes, he could see a figure moving slowly toward him. The air in front of him wavered and the figure split into two men, moving side by side, then merged back into one. He closed his eyes again.
When he opened them, Inspector Adrian March was standing over him.
“You look rocky, Constable,” March said. “Your head’s still bleeding.”
“Did you catch him?”
March snorted and stretched his hand out to indicate the marshes behind the church. Green and brown, they extended as far as the eye could see. Day could smell the rotting plant life and hear the desperate insects calling out to one another. Their lives amounted to a handful of days in which to find love and leave their legacies.
“Sanders could be almost anywhere by now. I can find no sign of him out there. He knows this territory far better than I,” March said.
“If you hadn’t stopped to check on me you might have caught up to him.”
“I couldn’t very well leave you to die.”
Day’s knees went out from under him and he fell back against the wall.
“You need to lie down, Day. I wish we had more men like you at the Yard. You saved that girl’s life, you know.”
March leaned in close to him and Day grabbed his shoulder as if he were steadying himself. He put his lips close to March’s ear and whispered, “He’s on the roof. I saw him run past the windows.”
March nodded, but he didn’t look up. He gazed across at the marshes and spoke too loudly.
“It’s too bad about Sanders,” he said. “What’s behind those marshes?”
“The river.”
“He could be anywhere, then. No doubt he’ll have taken a boat by now. Let’s get you back inside.”
March put his arm around Day’s shoulders and they entered the vestibule. Inside, out of earshot of the man on the roof, March set Day down on a bench. Across from the bench was a single door. Day pointed at it.
“Inside that closet there’s a ladder to the roof. Sanders has to come back through here to get down. He’s trapped himself.”
“I’ll bring him down.”
“Give me a moment to get my bearings and I’ll go with you.”
“You stay here. If he gets past me, stop him in this room.”
“He might still be a danger. You shouldn’t face him alone.”
“You forget, you’ve already disarmed him. You broke his weapon in two with your rocklike head.” March jiggled the closet doorknob. “Locked.”
“Where’s the parish priest?”
“He’s outside. We cleared this place out. If I go out to get him, Sanders will know we’re on to him.”
March knelt in front of the door and pulled a flat leather case from his jacket pocket. Inside was an assortment
of odd-looking keys. He tried each of them in turn and the third key fit the lock. He turned it and a soft click echoed through the tiny room.
“Skeleton keys. I collect them. When you become an inspector, buy a good set and remember to have them on your person at all times. You never know when they’ll be handy.”
“I’ll never be an inspector, sir. I’m content here.”
“It is more important to use your gifts well than to settle for being content. You were the only one who saw the significance of the missing horseshoe. You’d make a fine detective.” March smiled. “And the bump in salary you’d receive would make that young lady happy.”
“Which young lady do you mean?”
“You may observe things that others miss, Constable, but I’m still better at it.”
He disappeared through the door. Day could hear his footsteps fading up the ladder to the roof.
“Constable?”
The voice came from outside. For a moment Day thought it was March, already calling down from the roof, but then it came again.
“Walter? Where are you?”
Day stood up too fast and had to steady himself with a hand on the wall. He stared at the forest-green pillow on the bench and waited for the swimming sensation to stop. When the world around him came back into focus, he noticed that the green was newly dotted with thick wet splashes of burgundy. He turned the pillow over to hide the blood and hurried outside.
“Claire?” he said.
He heard a noise from above and took a few steps back from the building. He looked up in time to see Adrian March heave into view through the trapdoor on the church’s roof. He scanned the length of the roof that was visible on this side and saw nothing, but a portion of the clerestory jutted out at the front of the building. It was the only place Sanders could be hiding. He nodded gently in that direction and saw March nod back.
“Walter?”
When he turned and saw Claire, everything else disappeared.
“Miss Carlyle, you must leave. Sanders is still at large.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“Well, I do. Leave before you’re hurt.”
“I will not. You asked me a question and it would be rude to leave without answering.”
“I apologize for that. I’ve had a blow to the head.”
“Don’t apologize. You have every right to ask me a simple question.”
“Not the one I asked. It was unforgivable of me.”
“You didn’t wait for my answer.”
“I don’t require an answer.”
“I think you do.”
“Your father has already arranged things with Mr Erwood.”
“My mind is made up on that matter. I am not some chit to be traded back and forth over a business matter.”
“Of course you aren’t. I never meant to—”
“Stay back, March.”
Day looked up. Sanders had emerged from behind the stones at the front of the church roof and was pulling himself up the rusted downspout bolted to the side of the clerestory. There was nowhere to go from there. March had a gun in his hand, but wasn’t pointing it at Sanders.
“Stop where you are, Sanders. You’re under arrest, on Her Majesty’s authority, for the murder of Zachariah Bent.”
“I’m innocent. I never did it.”
“I will never marry Percy Erwood,” Claire said.
Day pulled his attention back to the girl in front of him and took a step toward the shadow of the church where she stood.
“Please, Claire,” he said. “It’s dangerous here. You must leave.”
“Come back to London with me, Sanders,” March said. “You’ll get a fair trial.”
“I’ll hang for it and you know it, March.”
“I’ve always fancied you,” Claire said.
“I didn’t know,” Day said.
“I’ve done everything short of throwing myself off a horse in front of you, but you never so much as glanced my way.”
“It would have gone better for you if you’d cooperated, Sanders,” March said. “You shouldn’t have run.”
“They’d have carted me off to prison. You don’t know what it’s like there.”
Day was growing dizzier trying to keep up with the conversation between March and Sanders while talking to Claire at the same time. Too much was going on and all of it was of vital importance. He held a hand to his head and shut his eyes. Above him, metal scraped against stone and a great wrenching noise filled the air.
“Sanders!”
Day rushed forward, his hands out, ready to push Claire out of the way. An instant later, Rex Sanders landed in Day’s arms and the weight of him pushed Day back against the church wall. A broken section of the downspout thunked to the ground where Day had been standing.
“I see you’ve caught our villain,” March said.
Day looked up and March peered at him over the edge of the roof. Day dropped Sanders in the dirt. Sanders tried to gain his feet, but Day tripped him and grabbed his arm.
“You’re under arrest,” he said.
“I’ll need help transporting him to London,” March said from above. “Care to come along?”
Day looked at Claire and she smiled. The sun flashed across his eyes and he smelled sunshine and honey and warm grass.
“Go,” she said. “I’ll be here waiting for you.”
Day smiled back at her and felt his knees buckle under him as the world turned dark again.
31
Hammersmith grabbed the countertop before he could fall. He held up a hand as Day moved toward him.
“Please, go on,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure, man?” Day said.
“A dizzy spell. Nothing to trouble yourself over.”
He had used a murder weapon to shave his face. He decided not to mention it. He would try not to think about the fact that he had just mingled his blood with that of a dead man.
“If Mr Hammersmith is quite all right,” Kingsley said, “I have a notion regarding how you might identify one of these many killers we seem to have running loose about the city.”
“The Beard Killer, you mean?” Blacker said.
“The Beard Killer? A beard is made up of unfeeling hair, Detective, and can’t be harmed in the least.”
“Of course. I know what a beard is, Doctor. But this person seems to target men with beards. Therefore I call him the Beard Killer.”
“Blackly humorous, I suppose, but inaccurate all the same.”
“You were about to say, Doctor?” Day said.
“Yes…” Kingsley glanced around the room before going on. He held the straight razor up so that the other three men could see it. “This will sound fantastic, I’m sure, but there is a theory and I believe it has some credence. I have been following the advancements of the French regarding scientific identification of the criminal class. Although I find him odious in all other respects, Alphonse Bertillon has made great strides in the field. He has begun recording certain physical measurements of those arrested within his jurisdiction. The French are now measuring the length of a man’s arms, the color of his eyes, the size of his shoes, all manner of things which might be altered individually, but when taken together add up to a positive identification. A man may shave his beard or don a pair of spectacles to disguise his appearance, but he cannot make himself taller or shorter or alter the length of his middle finger without, I suppose, a great deal of difficulty.”
“Are you saying that you can somehow deduce these things from that razor?” Day said.
“No. Certainly not. But there is an additional characteristic that the French are not using yet. They are considering it quite seriously, but there has been some opposition.”
He hesitated, and Day urged him on.
“Bear with me,” Kingsley said. “This will be hard to credit, but perhaps a demonstration will help. Fiona? May I borrow your charcoal, dear?”
The girl jumped at the mention of her nam
e. She had been standing unnoticed in the corner of the room, leaning against the long counter and quietly drawing. As she passed by him, Hammersmith glanced at her tablet and saw the sketch she had been working on. It was a remarkable likeness of Hammersmith himself.
Fiona handed the piece of charcoal to her father. Kingsley looked at her portrait of the policeman and scowled at Hammersmith. Hammersmith shrugged.
“What was I saying?” Kingsley said.
“We haven’t the slightest idea,” Blacker said. “But it had something to do with a razor and a piece of charcoal.”
Hammersmith had never worked closely with Blacker, and he found that he didn’t like the detective’s flippant attitude. Inspector Day seemed like a serious fellow, though. He was new, but he was clearly determined to do the job properly.
“Ah, yes,” Kingsley said. “The razor. And not so much the charcoal itself, but the dust from it.”
“The dust?”
“One moment, please.”
Kingsley opened a drawer under the counter and rummaged through it. Hammersmith glanced over at Day and Blacker, who were talking quietly to each other. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Blacker seemed angry about it. Finally Kingsley straightened up with a frustrated grunt and closed the drawer. He pursed his lips and looked around the room.
“I just need something that will … something coarse,” he said.
Blacker and Day stopped talking and looked up.
“Coarse? Some sort of fabric?”
“Of course not,” Kingsley said. “That wouldn’t—”
He smiled and pointed at the back wall of the room. Hammersmith turned to look as Kingsley hurried past him and slapped the bricks.
“Coarse, like bricks,” he said. “These ought to do the job. Now you’re going to see something amazing.”
He began to rub the charcoal across the bricks, back and forth, up and down, darkening the wall. He kept one hand cupped under the charcoal to keep the dust from drifting to the floor.
“I have been corresponding,” Kingsley said, “with a man named Henry Faulds. He’s Scottish, a missionary who has spent some time in the Orient. Faulds has been petitioning the Yard of late with a notion he’s brought back with him.”