Beneath London (24 page)

“Sit
still
, Professor, if you will,” Charity Loftus said. “You’re covered in bloody dirt, right down the back of your neck, and your poor shirt won’t come clean no matter what’s done to it.” She paused long enough to peer into his face. “You’ve had your brain pan shaken. I can see it in your eyes. Does the head ache?”

“No, ma’am,” St. Ives said, only a small lie. He realized that the entire side of his face must be covered in dried blood. He saw that he was filthy too, now that he looked at his hands in the lamplight. His clothing was streaked with dirt and white dust. He hadn’t given his condition a thought. No wonder people fled away at the sight of him. “Is Mr. Loftus roundabout?” he asked.

“He’s at Wyldes Farm,” Theodosia told him, wringing bloody water out of the rag while Charity came at him with a fresh one. “We’re wintering there, going on tomorrow morning. A man named Mr. Carpenter has a society, and they’ve given us leave to stay in our own manner, with the barn open to us when it snows.”

“
Edward
Carpenter, do you mean? The Fellowship of the New Life?”

“Aye, so they call themselves,” Charity said, “although the old life suits us well enough. I can’t say which Carpenter. Loftus says they’ve got an excess of bees in their bonnet, to be certain, but they’re a peaceable lot what believes that the whole thing is the same, if you follow me, not bloody-minded bigots, as are thick among us.” She looked carefully at him now and asked, “Does the missus know what’s come of you?” And then, without waiting for an answer, she grabbed a small boy who just then appeared in their midst and said, “Shipton! Run out to Wyldes farm and fetch home your dad if he ain’t already on the way. Tell him the Professor’s come among us and is much knocked about.”

The boy set out at once, scouring along like a rabbit up a moonlit path through the trees.

“I took a fall earlier today and then had a long tramp of it,” St. Ives told her. “Alice doesn’t know.”

“Ah,” Charity said. “And after your fall you took it into your mind to tramp up to Wood Pond?” She gave St. Ives a look, as if this were further evidence that his wits were addled or as if she knew that something was afoot that he didn’t intend to reveal. “Was the fall accidental like?”

“Perhaps it was not,” St. Ives said. “But I’d best tell the tale only once, when Mr. Loftus arrives. “I’m grateful to you for the kindness, ma’am. And this is first rate brandy, to be sure.”

“Loftus’s brother brought a hogshead of it across the Channel with some men in a boat that was good enough to land him and the barrel in a handy cove in Shelmerston, where we stayed for a time last spring. He shared it out, the brother did, and since then all else is ‘swill’ to Mr. Loftus. He must have right French brandy now that he’s used to it. ‘Try something new and the old won’t do,’ as they say truly enough. There, sir. You look less like a corpse now. Here’s Mr. Loftus and Shipton, back already. Loftus will have you sorted out.”

It was indeed Mr. Loftus, who took in the sight of St. Ives without a shudder, and very soon St. Ives found that there was a fresh glass of brandy in his hand and cold meat pie and cheese and bread before him on a plate, and it was only by main force that he managed to remain awake long enough to tell his tale, the details much reduced and leaving out all but a hint of an explosion. Very shortly he made his way with Loftus and Theodosia to the Spaniards Inn, a satchel of Loftus’s clothing and other necessaries in his hand.

He fell wearily into bed at last, his ribs aching, listening to the nightjars calling outside on the heath and looking at the moonlight shining on the window curtains. He thought of Eddie and Cleo, tucked away safely in their beds in Scarborough, and in the few moments that it took him to fall asleep he said a silent goodnight to Alice, remembering the happy time they had spent in this very room and how easy it was to forget to be thankful for one’s blessings. Some time later he awakened to the sound of rain, which made him all the more grateful to be lying abed.

EIGHTEEN

F
inn awakened from a sound sleep in the storage room, leaning against a very comfortable flour sack against the wall. He had no memory of having drifted off, and he wondered how long he had been at it, wasting time when there was precious little time to waste. He ate his bread and cheese, stood up and stretched, and then walked out to have a look around at his prison. The cellar was large, with several storage rooms. He looked into them, finding the leather ribbons that dangled from the ceiling and that switched on the electric lights when you yanked upon them. He did so and then dropped the strap in a hurry, marveling when the glass globes switched on like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. He was leery of electricity and the buzzing it made, and had heard that it could cook a person like a Christmas goose on the instant. Gaslight was more amenable. In an adjacent, high-ceilinged room he discovered a lumber of furniture – wardrobe cabinets and dining tables and heavy, carved wooden chairs with turned legs. Some of it was quite old, the wood dark and dusty and all of it casting deep, mysterious shadows.

He made his way through it to yet another door further on, which he opened, revealing a small room with a narrow cot in it. The bed had a feather mattress, which Finn pushed on before taking a look at a case full of old books – leather-bound relics in Latin, one of which bore a date of 1712. It looked to be a hermit’s room, with candle sconces on the walls, heavy tallow candles sitting on the sconces and matches in a niche by the door. He lit a match simply to see whether it was good, and the flaming tip broke off and flew away like a comet, landing on the bit of carpet on the floor and smoldering. Finn stepped on it to put it out. It seemed to him that the room hadn’t been lived in for an age, but it was a comfortable cell in any event – luxurious for a hermit, say, or a highwayman.

He would occupy this room if need be, he decided, if he must spend the night in the house, or two nights, or however many days and nights passed before he could leave and take Clara with him. For he had decided that he would not leave Fell House, as he thought of it now, without Clara. Clara’s fate would be his own fate. He was certain, or at least hopeful, that Beaumont would not betray him, and equally certain that no one would look into this room, if only because no one had, apparently, for a long time, given the untrodden layer of dust on the floorboards.

He returned to the storeroom and began shifting crates and boxes to see what food lay about: jars of deviled ham, it turned out, and marmalade, pickled oysters and bacon, tightly wrapped Christmas puddings and sugar-loafs. He filled an empty sack with provisions and then returned to his room. The empty sack could be packed under the door to block the light of his candles. Satisfied, he went out again, switching off the lights in the furniture room, and shutting its door and the door to the storage room, making sure that there was nothing visibly out of order – nothing that would give him away. He thought of something that Beaumont had said to him when he had asked the dwarf about finding a way out of the house. “The way you come in,” had been the answer, served up without a thought.

He stood beside Narbondo’s cabinet now, the Doctor looking as if he were unhappily asleep. The lift shaft stretched away overhead, and Finn saw now that it went far aloft – into the top of the house, no doubt. They could haul things to and from the storerooms if Narbondo’s box was shifted, which would be easy enough, since it was on wheels and could be removed to the carriage house. A wooden ladder ascended the entire height. The shaft was illuminated, which was convenient to be sure, although he wondered whether someone climbing the ladder – himself, say – would throw a shadow.

The ladder itself was let into the wall so that the lift would slip past it without hindrance. On each floor, adjacent to the ladder, stood the wrought-iron gates that closed the shaft off from the rooms onto which it opened. For a long moment, someone climbing the ladder would be visible from within whatever room lay beyond the gate. He stood contemplating this for the space of ten seconds and then decided that there was no better time to investigate. If he was in danger of being discovered, he could climb back down easily enough, but he must know the way of things if he was to be of any use to Clara.

He ducked into the ladder niche and began climbing, very quickly rising to the level of the first gate, beyond which lay darkness. Opposite stood the double doors that let out into the carriage house. A dim light shone between the doors. He could smell horses and feed and leather, and he wondered whether the doors were locked.

From his foothold on the ladder he leapt out ape-like and grasped the lines that raised and lowered the lift, swinging straight on across to the other side, clinging one-handed to a stanchion on a narrow ledge while he pushed on each of the doors in turn. They
were
locked. The way was closed to him.

He swung back across to the ladder, grasped a rung, and climbed again toward the next floor, where a lighted room stood beyond its wrought-iron gate. He stopped to listen before he climbed any higher, but he heard nothing at all, and so he continued upward until he could see that the gate closed off a broad, illuminated hallway, empty of people. He tried the latch, discovering happily that this gate was unlocked, although clearly it mightn’t remain so. Dim voices sounded now, perhaps approaching, and he hauled himself quickly upward again toward the third floor – another lighted room, quite clearly occupied, for a man’s voice spoke from within with evident authority – the voice of an admiral, he thought, used to being obeyed.

Finn could see the part of the speaker’s head and broad shoulders – long white hair, an old man it would seem, although if he were an old man then he was tolerably fit – his shoulders as powerful as his voice. Perhaps it was Mr. Klingheimer, who had demanded a sack with a man’s head in it. Another unseen man spoke, denying that he had committed some folly that he had apparently just been accused of. In the next moment he heard Beaumont’s voice – for it could be no other.

“It’s as Mr. Shadwell said, your honor. We went down right deep at Deans Gate. But the deeper we went, the wider the way, so to speak, like a funnel downside up, until it was something like being sent out to find a man on the streets of London its own self. You’re a-going north while mayhaps he’s a-going east. Way leads on to way, do you see?”

“I’m fully persuaded of it, Mr. Zounds. Be so kind as to return to the cellar to see that everything is ship-shape. Narbondo is visiting Dr. Peavy again tomorrow morning, so you’ll be quit of him. In the meantime, you can leave the toads, as you call them, to tend to themselves. I’ll look in on the heads. Your time is your own tomorrow, then – a holiday. Remain within the confines of the property, if you will, in case I have need of you.”

There was the sound of a door shutting, and then the man who Finn supposed was Klingheimer said, “And so in lieu of the head of Professor St. Ives you’ve brought me this scrap of soiled news-print reeking of pickled onions and Smithfield ham.”

“His sandwich was wrapped in it, Mr. Klingheimer. What else could it mean? It’s a living man who eats a sandwich. There’s a bit of crust on it.”

“What of the fat man, then? Have you a theory?”

“Dead, I’d warrant.”

“You’d
warrant
it? You’re a confident man, Mr. Shadwell, to give me your warrant. Mind that I don’t take it out of you in the form of a pound of flesh. Mightn’t the fat man have eaten the sandwich, then? Among living entities, fat men are inclined to eat sandwiches above all others, or so reason leads us to believe.”

“If that fool Lewis had used slow-match instead of quick, we’d have found them as we planned and had our way with them,” the man named Shadwell said evasively. “He brought the roof down before they’d even set out.”

“Mr. Lewis’s foolishness doesn’t enter into this discussion, not at this moment. I’m wondering about
your
foolishness, Mr. Shadwell. The girl Clara refuses to speak or eat, you know, and that disappoints me. My efforts haven’t persuaded her, although I believe she’ll come around in time. Her reticence is your doing, it seems to me.”