Beneath London (9 page)

A barn stood nearby, the top half of its Dutch door open and the gray mule Ned Ludd standing just inside, assessing the wide world with a satisfied face. Clara Wright stood beside him, stroking his neck. The mule was reputed to be astonishingly intelligent, had learnt his letters up to T by now. When he had the entire alphabet he would be taught to spell, all of this under Clara’s tutelage.

At Mother Laswell’s insistence St. Ives had been compelled to reveal the cause of Sarah Wright’s death before she would leave the wood, but the revelations were more mystifying to her than revealing. The hole in the floor had been evidently troubling. She had made him describe what he saw in particular detail, and then had shaken her head and said, “They didn’t find it.” She took it no further, and St. Ives refrained from asking what it was they didn’t find and how she knew. When they had arrived at Hereafter Farm, Mother Laswell had conveyed the sad news to Clara – although only that which needed to be conveyed – but Clara had merely nodded. Clearly she was already aware of her mother’s death, and in fact revealed to Mother Laswell the exact moment on the previous day when it came into her mind that her mother had breathed her last.

Mother Laswell poured tea into their cups now, and passed around the milk and sugar, then sat back in her chair. “Clara lost her sight when she was seven years old,” she told them. “Shortly thereafter Sarah Wright expelled her husband – the scoundrel Clemson Wright – from the cottage. It was… very bad. He beat Sarah, do you see? And he took the money that she had laid by – that she had received from her own mother. He never returned, thank heaven. Clara came to live here some few months later, nearly eight years ago now.”

“Was the loss of Clara’s eyesight organic in nature?” St. Ives asked Mother Laswell. “Did it advance over time?”

“It was quite sudden, in fact.”

“Is it
psychical
in nature, then?”

She shrugged, as if the question was not vital. “
Hysterical
, do you mean? It’s an unhappy word, Professor. Will it surprise you to know that I corresponded with Monsieur Charcot himself on just that subject? Have you heard the name, sir?”

“A prominent physician in France, although with some tolerably modern notions.”

“My good friend Mabel Morningstar had met the man. He was a friend of Mabel’s late husband. Charcot suggested that I convey Clara to Paris for a course of hypnotic therapy. We were to be prepared to stay for some time. Clara refused to go, and neither Sarah nor I insisted. Half of me believed that Charcot was a charlatan, you see – another Mesmer, if you will, who intended to publicize Clara’s misfortune in order to promote himself.”

“Indeed,” St. Ives said, “I believe that the jury is still out on that subject, ma’am, although Charcot’s work has borne interesting fruit. I have no business playing the grand inquisitor, but may I ask whether Clemson Wright misused the girl?”

“There you have it,” Mother Laswell said.

“Ah. And now this terrible business.” St. Ives shook his head and stared into his teacup, as if reading the leaves.

“And yet Clara possesses a strength of spirit that I envy,” Mother Laswell said. “Sometimes I feel like a weakling when I’m in her presence.”

Alice looked out through the dark afternoon and saw that Clara was still in the lamp-lit barn, feeding an apple to the mule. It astonished her that children could undergo such hardships and still have any happiness in them. Mother Laswell poured more tea into their cups. She looked worn out, and not merely from the day’s tribulations, Alice thought, but from early years of trouble and pain – a wicked, murderous husband of her own, and a son who was worse. Both dead now, and the world better off without them. Their malicious ghosts still haunted her life, however.

“Shall I tell you something that will surprise you?” Mother Laswell asked, breaking the silence.

“By all means,” St. Ives said.

“I’ll reveal to you that Clara is a hydroscope of enormous power. Her ability to sense the presence of underground water and of dead things buried near it is quite remarkable.”

“Do you mean that she’s mastered the art of the divining rod?” Alice asked.

“No, Alice. I mean that Clara
is
the divining rod – a human hydroscope. She falls into fits if she stands above underground water, even very deep beneath the earth. She begins to spin, and can’t help herself. She’ll seize if she’s not forcibly moved away.”

“I’ll tell you truthfully,” St. Ives said, “that I’m skeptical of wands and hydroscopes having the power to find buried human bodies or treasures or suchlike. The notion was exploded long ago.”

“You would not be skeptical if you’d witnessed Clara entering a cemetery, Professor. In truth we keep her very nearly a prisoner at Hereafter Farm, for the ground beneath her can become a living nightmare if she’s not careful. Her mother fashioned a pair of shoes soled with sheet lead for her, which diminishes the effect, but the girl is unhappy wearing them. The shoes diminish her powers, you see, and her second sight fades because of the layer of lead that separates her from the earth. When one has second sight in abundance but is lacking in eyesight, one is loath to lose one’s powers and be left impaired. At times she wards off such threats by reciting rhyme or running through the alphabet in strange sequences that she has invented. Sarah taught her a poem by Mr. Lear – ‘The Jumblies’ – making certain that she had it word for word despite its being nonsense, or perhaps because of it. They used the poem to call each other – telepathically, to use the modern term. Those who know the art scarcely need to name it.”

“Clara is an interesting girl, to be sure,” St. Ives said. “I don’t wonder that you wanted to keep her out of the hands of Monsieur Charcot or anyone else who wanted to make a study of her.”

“Then you can perhaps understand that I must know what Dr. Pullman discovered in regard to Sarah Wright, but that I very much want to remain out of the way, if you take my meaning, and Clara also.”

“Certainly,” St. Ives said. “You seem to be carrying a great weight, Mother; you needn’t bear it alone. There’s no greater burden than secret knowledge.”

“You’re in the right of it there. To put it plainly, I fear that my dead husband is the source of this evil. When I first spoke of him to you I refused to utter his name, which was an abomination to me. But our doings in London and in the marsh a year ago left me a changed woman, and his name no longer has any power over me. He was born Maurice De Salles. Now you two know his name, in case you hear it again. When they hanged him for practicing vivisection and for the murder of children I wrote that name on a slip of paper and buried it in the dung heap, in order to be done with it. I haven’t used the name since. It has become imperative, however, that I know whether his… whether Maurice De Salles’s legacy, so to speak, is at work here.”

“Your dead husband’s legacy is not your own legacy, Mother, whatever his name is,” Alice told her. “And the man has been dead as a stone for a good many years.”

“So he has, after a fashion. But what he
knew
hasn’t died with him, Alice, nor ever will, apparently, and it attracts those who want the knowledge for their own ends. I told you something about him, Professor, when we first met on that dark night after poor Mary Eastman was slaughtered in the graveyard, but I left much out, because it didn’t signify. I believe it signifies now. After my husband was hanged, they buried his body at the crossroads down from the old bridge in order to maze the body, and a stake was driven through the body to fix it in place.”

“Surely that sort of thing was given up in the last century,” Alice said.

“Not in special cases, ma’am, I do assure you, and his was a special case. Worse than you can easily believe. The body still lies there today, pinned in place, but not in the state in which it was first buried. I have no desire to offend you with what I reveal, but I’m afraid I must reveal it. The night after the burial, when the dirt in the grave was still loose, it was opened in the dark of night and the head was taken. The grave was closed again, the soil tamped flat and swept clean, and so it’s remained. The road was metaled some years since, but thank God the body was deep enough to lie undisturbed. The desecration of the body was done at my request, and I’ll tell you plainly that I would do it again without a qualm.”

Alice had covered her mouth with her hand and stared at Mother Laswell now in simple surprise. “Why on earth?” she asked. “It must have been terrible.”

“It was … necessary, ma’am.”

“In certain European countries,” St. Ives said, saving Mother Laswell the effort, “it is still quite common to cut out the heart or remove the head of a condemned murderer, divide the body into pieces, and bury the pieces near running water, so that the stream will bear away fragments of the spirit. According to popular thought, the body must be separated into parts in order to confound the ghost, just as the several paths that merge at a crossroads confounds it, disallowing it from returning home. The law takes a dim view of the practice, but the law takes a dim view of many notions that innocent, well-meaning people are entirely dedicated to, although they mightn’t speak of it.”

“Just so,” Mother Laswell said. “The law has an understanding of the world that has little to do with things of the spirit. I recall you telling me that you saw strange things yourself when the Cathedral was besieged, Alice – things that were beyond your ken?”

“Yes,” Alice said. “You’re perfectly correct. I find once again that I’ve led a moderately sheltered life in some ways.”

“Be happy that you were allowed to. I wish to heaven that I had. As I said, however, I contrived to have the head removed. I myself did not take an active part, although I watched through a pair of opera glasses from a high window in the Chequers Inn, where I had put up during my husband’s trial, being in fear of staying at home alone. I saw little beyond moving shadows, for it was a fortunately dark night, but my conspirators worked swiftly. The gravediggers were the two men who had buried the body that very morning. Mr. Sarney, the butcher, who owed me a debt, cut through the neck of the corpse to take the head. Sarney died not long after, and the two gravediggers kept mum, being culpable themselves and well paid for their work. One of them passed away long years ago, but the other was alive until a week past.

“He became sexton in his time at St. Peter and Paul’s, and I came to know him quite well. He was ninety years of age, old Mr. Peattie, and it was thought that he passed away in his sleep, but I have my doubts. There was one other person who stood by me, and that was Sarah Wright. It was she who boxed up the head of Maurice De Salles and buried it as a favor to me, laying counterfeit coins on the eyes and stuffing the lead box with mistletoe and dipping it in layers of wax. I have no idea where it lies, or, God help us, where it lay, if indeed she buried it beneath the floorboards of her own cottage, which I very much doubt that she would have. We never spoke of it after, lest we call up spirits.”

Mother Laswell paused. She pursed her lips and shook her head, as if to rid her mind of the recollection. “Sarah Wright was murdered,” she said, “because someone wanted something of her. She was quite penniless. She had nothing to give them aside from knowledge. When you speak to Dr. Pullman, Professor, you would do me a favor to say nothing of what I’ve revealed to you just now, although you could mention my name innocently enough. I don’t ask you to lie, but I must know if the head of Maurice de Salles was recovered from the cottage.”

“I have nothing against an honorable lie, Mother, or a convenient fiction.”

“Nor have I,” Alice said. “We’re entirely with you, and we’ll do anything that can be done for Clara.”

Langdon poured the rest of his tea down his throat and looked at his pocket watch. Alice knew that he was counting the minutes, waiting for Hasbro’s arrival. Dr. Pullman and the Constable had passed by on the road some time ago, the body lying in the back of the wagon, covered in a shroud, and Langdon had spoken to them briefly, agreeing to pay a visit to Dr. Pullman’s residence at the very first opportunity.

Now three ragamuffin children, two girls and a small boy, orphans taken in by Mother Laswell, walked into the room along with Clara Wright, the two girls holding Clara’s hands. Clara was quite pretty despite the sad look on her face. She wore smoked spectacles and a pair of thin stockings, but no shoes. Alice had found her sightless eyes disconcerting in the past, which struck her now as a shameful weakness.

The children gawked for a moment at Alice and then ran giggling toward the door to the kitchen, the little boy ducking past the girls and endeavoring to squeeze through the doorway first. The taller of the girls snatched the collar of his shirt and dragged him back, calling him a cauliflower-head, and the three disappeared into the kitchen, shouting abuse at each other with a happy vigor.

Clara curtsied and then cocked her right arm around so that her hand rested on her left shoulder, the crook of her elbow pointing straight out before her. As if “seeing” that Mother Laswell sat in the chair six steps away to the left, she walked in an uninhibited manner in that direction and put her hand on the old woman’s shoulder. Mother Laswell covered Clara’s hand with her own.

Alice, hoping that Clara would recognize her voice, said, “It’s good to see you again, Clara, although I wish it were under other circumstances.” It occurred to her immediately that her phrasing wanted improvement, although no amount of improvement would make mere words say anything useful. Clara turned toward Alice and acknowledged her statement with a nod of her head, and then sat down in a chair next to Mother Laswell. Mother had told Alice that Clara rarely spoke except in her sleep, sometimes laughing aloud, which seemed to Alice to be both hopeful and troubling in equal measure.

There was the sound of a vehicle coming up the drive now, and, as if put off by the thought of visitors, Clara followed her elbow out of the room, turning away down the hall.

St. Ives rose and went to the window. “It’s Hasbro,” he said, plucking his coat and hat from the hooks by the door. “With haste there’s the chance we’ll return before dark.”