Part 16 (1/2)
”Ah, yes. Two nights ago. Just upriver of the sink-hole, I believe. We heard about the tragedy, of course, the Board of Works being in a position of some responsibility for the condition of the embankment.”
”A police sergeant at Bow Street Station led me to believe that you would have some knowledge of the particular dead house to which his body had been taken.”
”Yes, of course. As I recall there was no way of identifying the man at the time, although we now believe him to be James Harrow. It is conceivable that he was robbed and his pocket-book taken. I merely speculate. That is, of course, a police matter. I am told that he had a curious dead bird with him, a bird thought to be extinct but entirely preserved, although what that means I cannot say pickled in refined brandy, perhaps. It would make a nice roast, I dare say.”
He paused to laugh at this quip, but fell silent when he saw that Alice was not amused. ”In any event, the body would almost certainly have been conveyed to the outhouse behind the Savoy Chapel. The Board has contracted with the Chapel to use the out-building as a morgue for the unidentified dead awaiting transportation to the Brookwood Cemetery. It's virtually certain that his body is still there, and perhaps the bird with it, although I advise you to proceed to the chapel without delay if you have any interest in either of the two.”
He stopped now, removed his spectacles, and looked hard at her. ”Mrs. St. Ives, did you say?”
”I did, sir.”
”Not the wife of Professor Langdon St. Ives?”
”Indeed.”
”Oh, my,” he said, looking stricken now. For a moment he was apparently mute. ”Yes, Mrs. St. Ives, almost certainly the Savoy Chapel, in the yard behind. The chapel has but the one very plain entrance at the front, and the new hotel dwarfs the place, but one can walk along an old carriageway to get to the back where the outhouse sits among the graves. It's not a pretty place, a morgue, but... May I be particularly candid, Mrs. St. Ives?”
”Please do be candid,” she said.
He glanced around with the look of a conspirator before going on. ”Work on the sink-hole all this hurry, hurry, hurry has progressed very much against my wishes. I want you to know that.”
”I'm happy to hear it. It progresses against my wishes also.”
”I myself flew in the face of it, and I'm happy to be able to reveal that fact to you at last. I gave an immediate order to dig away the rubble in an attempt to locate your husband and Mr. Frobisher despite the considered opinion of the Corp of Engineers, who unfortunately acted entirely against my wishes. I would like for you to know that the Board did not abandon your husband and Mr. Frobisher to their fate at least Percival Lewis did not.”
Alice was certain that the man was lying. He did not possess a talent for it, unlike many such men in positions of petty authority whose only authentic motivation was personal gain. There must have been something in her face that made her distrust plain, for Lewis turned his eyes and then his face away and shouted, ”You there!” at a gawky boy who was just then coming into the room through a door to a hallway. ”You, Jenkins!” The boy looked up sullenly. ”Pardon me for a moment, ma'am,” Mr. Lewis said to Alice. ”This will take a short time, but I beg you to be patient.”
He stepped away, waving the boy Jenkins over to his desk, where he scribbled a note onto a piece of foolscap and put it into an envelope. Alice watched as he spoke to the boy under his breath and then nodded toward the door. The boy set out at an unhurried pace, and Mr. Lewis shouted, ”Be quick about it, Mr. Jenkins!” and the boy glanced back, giving Alice a quizzical look a look that seemed to mean something, although what it meant she couldn't say. He glanced at Mr. Lewis in the next moment, and Mr. Lewis pointed at the door, through which Jenkins disappeared.
Mr. Lewis busied himself at the desk then, searching through drawers and moving objects about the surface. Alice had no patience with the man at all, despite his plea. He looked up at her finally and shook his head in a gesture of failure, and then hurried toward her, dusting his hands. ”I seemed to recall having seen something regarding Harrow's death after all had hoped to find confirmation of the whereabouts of Mr. Harrow's... remains... but I'm afraid, alas...”
When Alice saw that he was played out, she said, ”You appear to be in a position of some responsibility, Mr. Lewis.”
”It is one of my charges to keep the employees busy, ma'am. The boy Jenkins is as lazy as a hog if he's allowed to be. Thinks it's his duty to support the walls with the weight of his shoulders, for the most part, but I've got the measure of him.”
”Thank you for being candid with me earlier, Mr. Lewis. I'll not mention what you've revealed to me about your efforts on behalf of my husband. As you are probably aware, he did not survive his ordeal, nor did Mr. Frobisher.”
”I was not aware of that, ma'am. I'll admit that I've held onto a modic.u.m of hope.”
”A modic.u.m of hope is as good as a feast, Mr. Lewis, and often just as transitory. There is one other thing you can be candid about, if you please.”
”Your humble servant,” he said, bowing to her.
”Just moments before the collapse that took the life of my husband, I witnessed a man who looked uncannily like you hiding among the boulders that made up the edge of the sink-hole.”
”Hiding, ma'am? I deny it.”
”So it appeared to me, Mr. Lewis. In fact, the word skulking comes to mind. I was no great distance away, you see, watching you through a pair of opera gla.s.ses from the deck of Mr. Frobisher's boat, which was anch.o.r.ed on the river. You don't deny having been there on the sh.o.r.e?”
He looked at her now, blinking his eyes rapidly and breathing hard, as if he had just climbed a flight of stairs. ”No, indeed,” he managed to say. ”I deny only that I was hiding. It was my duty to be there, upon my honor.”
”You're a man of duty and honor, to be sure, Mr. Lewis. I'm baffled, however. I have no knowledge of explosives, but it appeared to me that you bent over to perform some action that was coincidental with the explosion.”
”You are no doubt correct, ma'am, as far as it goes. I recall that I tied my shoelace. I'm at a loss to... Are you implying that...?”
”That you are lying to me, Mr. Lewis? I wonder about it, a.s.suredly.”
”I protest, ma'am.”
”Do you see that strange-looking man sitting by the door?” Alice asked him. ”The very lanky man wearing the b.l.o.o.d.y bandage.”
”I do, however...”
”His name is Kraken, sir, and a very appropriate name it is. He is my late husband's brother. Two years ago he tore a piece of a man's scalp from his head and compelled the man to eat it. He was adjudged mad, and my husband persuaded the court to allow him to live with us on our farm in Aylesford. My husband functioned as his keeper, and now I've got charge of him. Mr. Kraken is devoted to me, sir. If I discover that you're lying, I'll set him upon you. I guarantee that you will not enjoy it.”
TWENTY-NINE.
IN AT THE WINDOW.
When Finn had fled from Klingheimer and found Beaumont's quarters unlocked, he had gone out through the window onto the roof, hearing the window latch behind him when it banged into place. The fog hung heavy over the rooftops and for most of an hour he was well hidden by it. But the sun and the wind dispersed the fog and for a time he was visible everywhere on the wretched roof. He had crouched in the shadow of a chimney for an age, feeling as if his life had come to a dead stop, and hoping that no one pa.s.sing on the pavement below would see him and shout ”thief.” When at last he had seen Beaumont turn up the byway from the direction of the river, the dwarf looked very much like salvation.
”They told me you'd scarpered,” Beaumont said to him after letting him in, ”but I knew you wouldn't have without your Clara. Good that they think you've gone, howsomever.”
”Even so,” Finn said, setting down his creel, ”I mean to take Clara out today, while they don't know that's what I'm about.”
”How do you mean to do it?” Beaumont asked.
”I don't know. Can you help me?” Finn watched his face. He still didn't know the man, not really, and what he was asking was more than a mere favor Beaumont's life, perhaps, if things went badly.
”Aye,” Beaumont said easily. ”I'm sick of this house, and the house is sick of me. The room in the cellar, did you leave it as you found it?”
Finn shook his head slowly. ”The bed was slept in and food left lying about that I took from the storeroom. They'll know I was there.”
”Then they'll wonder whether Beaumont knew you was there. Indeed they will.” He studied the problem for a moment. ”I'll play the fool, of course. It's true enough that I keep to my station and that you was hid.”
There was the sound of a woman screaming just then, m.u.f.fled by walls and floors rather than by distance. ”Can that be Clara?” Finn asked with a rising horror.