Mayhem (30 page)

‘No, no, thank you, Mrs Parks. I do feel much better now. Perhaps some company will do me good.’

Mrs Parks stared at me for a moment longer, her expression unreadable. ‘Very well, sir,’ she said eventually, and disappeared back towards her own domain.

Tonight. If I had to take the drug and study Harrington, then I would do it tonight. I had prevaricated for longer than Hamlet, and my own inability to act or to know what to believe was driving me just as mad as the Danish
prince. I would appease the priest by taking the drug, and I would appease my own curiosity by questioning Harrington about Elizabeth Jackson.

I waited until Mrs Parks had left and then bathed and dressed before taking the narrow box containing the opium equipment from the back of the drawer in my locked study desk and tucking it into a pocket cunningly set into the lining of my waistcoat. I resisted the urge to take some laudanum, but I did pour myself a brandy. I stood by the window and looked out at the heavy summer sky before pulling the curtains closed to shut the view out.

I sometimes wish I had allowed myself to gaze on more of that dying day …

*

Charles was dining with colleagues from the hospital at his club, it transpired, to discuss covering his duties during his absence. Like myself, Charles rarely took time away from work, and the staff would probably feel his absence far more than they realised. As would I, should there be – though I prayed there would not be – any more gristly discoveries dredged from the Thames.

Juliana and Mary kept the conversation going, talking about the preparations for Whitby, and how early they would have to be up in order to catch the right train. Harrington and I commented occasionally as we ate our soup, politely interjecting as and when required, and I noticed that he appeared much calmer and more relaxed than when I had seen him at the
wharves. Every now and then, when someone else was speaking, Juliana’s eyes would dart nervously from James to me and then back again, making me wonder what had been said about our meeting the previous day. I imagined she would have been embarrassed to hear that her husband had told me of their argument – maybe James had not believed me, and had confronted Juliana when he had gone home. He had certainly been in a strange enough mood. I realised that this dinner invitation was perhaps a conciliatory attempt to smooth out any awkwardness there might be, and I wondered how much I might soon be adding to it.

Between the first and second courses I made my excuses and locked myself in the bathroom. I worked fast, and within moments I was sucking the strange-tasting smoke deep into my lungs. My skin tingled, and the last remnants of my exhaustion disappeared and the world sharpened. I opened the small window to dissipate the scent and smoked some more, inhaling fast. When I was done, I put the hot pipe back into its wooden box and slipped the box back into its hiding place before splashing water on my face.

I took a deep breath. I was ready.

The beef was being served as I returned to the table, preventing any discussion of my well-being, and I kept my head down as I took my seat. When I was sure that I could maintain a steady expression, whatever sights might greet me, I looked at James Harrington.

I saw nothing.

There was not even an aura of colour around his head. I stared harder, willing my imagination on, but still there was just a young blond man sitting opposite me. My heart thumped hard in my chest. Had the drugs failed? Had I become immune to its effects because of my new dependence on its sister drug, the seductive laudanum? I looked over at Juliana, and had to stop myself sighing in relief. Around her head yellows and reds shone like sunlight: beautiful summer colours with lines of blue darting here and there. These were the colours I always associated with Emily, the girl lost so many years ago – they were colours I associated with love.

‘Aren’t you hungry, Thomas?’ Juliana asked, breaking my reverie. ‘Are you still unwell?’

‘I am actually much better, thank you,’ I said, ‘and this looks delicious.’ In fact, my appetite had totally deserted me, and my mouth had dried up – the effects of the drug, perhaps, or my own nervousness. I sipped my wine before cutting into the meat, which was very rare. I tried not to look at the blood that seeped out across my plate, or to think about it in my mouth as I chewed a large forkful. All my senses had become heightened, and I could hear my fellow diners’ lips smacking noisily as they ate, the wet, slick sound of meat being devoured – a pack of beasts, tearing the victim of the hunt apart.

‘This is delicious,’ I said, and smiled at Mary, my
outward calm quite at odds with my inner revulsion as the virtually raw beef slid down my throat. I thought I could feel it squirm like a live thing, but I knew this was just the drug; everything was normal. The food was perfectly cooked; it was exactly as I would choose to eat it myself. I distracted myself by looking at the scenes that danced around Mary’s head. The colours were duller, more world-weary than those around Juliana, but within the folds of the muted pinks and blues were flashes of homely items, like baby clothes. This was Mary: a mother and wife.

I looked once again at Harrington, who had already almost finished and was clearly hungry enough for more.

‘Speaking of illness,’ I said. ‘I am so glad to see you so fully recovered, James – especially with the wonderful news of the baby.’

‘Thank you. Let’s hope I can keep it at bay for longer this time.’

That was a strange turn of phrase to use when talking about illness, I thought. ‘Perhaps you should let someone else in your offices take on more of the running of your business for a while,’ I suggested, then sipped more wine, trying to loosen my throat. Somehow the absence of any kind of vision around him was more disturbing than the colours that spun and twisted around the two women. ‘I was impressed by what a large operation it is – but it must put quite a strain on you.’

‘Perhaps, but it was my father’s business and I want to run it like he did: from the helm.’ James picked up his own wine glass and smiled at me. His teeth were white and his eyes were sharp, like blue crystals. I shivered as we looked at each other. I could still taste the blood from the beef in my mouth and I imagined it in Harrington’s too – and quite suddenly, I felt like prey.

‘I think James is not the only one who works too hard, Thomas,’ Juliana said. ‘Like all physicians – my father included – you are quite unable to take your own advice. You have not been well yourself, have you? You have certainly lost weight.’ She looked at my plate. ‘At least James has not lost his appetite.’

‘You are right of course,’ I concurred. ‘Doctors always make the worst patients. But these are exceptional times.’

‘I suppose that’s one way of putting it,’ Juliana said. ‘
Awful
times might be better. I shudder when I think of the sights you and Father have seen – those poor women.’

This was it: my chance to probe Harrington, and I had not had to steer the conversation there myself. I could see that Mary was about to reprimand her daughter for bringing up such an unpleasant topic at the dinner table – the colours around her head had darkened and her mouth had started to open – when I seized the moment.

‘Poor girls indeed. Your father told you about the last one – Elizabeth Jackson?’

‘Told us what?’ Juliana frowned, and Harrington’s fork froze momentarily between his plate and his mouth. It was the slightest hesitation, but I saw it.

I kept my eyes on him as I continued, ‘She used to work in the same street where you live – she was a housemaid, and a very good one, by all accounts.’

‘But that’s awful,’ Juliana said.

‘How terrible,’ Mary added. ‘And what a strange coincidence. But I thought Charles said she had been living on the streets?’

Harrington put his fork down and looked up at me, and now I was sure I could see the tiniest flicker of a smile twisting one corner of his mouth.

‘She had been. She ran away from her job and her home in November of last year.’

‘But why?’ Mary asked. However much she might disapprove of the topic in general, her curiosity was now piqued. ‘Had she got herself in trouble?’

‘The police do think a man was involved.’ I kept staring at Harrington, who raised another forkful of food and chewed it slowly, his eyes firmly fixed on mine. ‘Something made her suddenly drop everything and leave it all behind.’

‘That was when we decided to move back to the house, isn’t it, James? It was around then, I’m sure of it.’ There was no accusation in Juliana’s voice, just wonder at the way life weaves people together in the form of coincidences.

‘Yes, it was,’ he said calmly. ‘How strange.’

‘She was in service there for several years. I wondered if you might have known her?’ I kept my tone light, and made a pretence of eating by pushing my food around my plate, but tension crackled in the air between us. I wondered if the women were aware of it.

‘I barely knew the names of our own maids, let alone those of others’,’ Harrington said. ‘And I was away from home a lot, first my studies, then my travels.’

A simple ‘no’ would have sufficed, but he had felt the need to elaborate on his reasons. I certainly did not know the names of the servants who worked in the houses around my own, and I doubted Mary or Charles did either – why had he needed to give more than that?

Blood heated in my veins and my face burned as my mind raced. There was a secret here – drug or no drug, I knew that. He
had
known Elizabeth Jackson;
he
was the reason she ran.

‘Why would you think James knew her?’ Juliana laughed, and I could hear a slight nervousness in her voice. Was my directness forcing her to peel back layers she built up to protect her own suspicions? I did not think for a moment that she would ever consider James a murderer, but given his strange behaviour recently, she might wonder if he had a sordid secret in his past – a servant girl in trouble would certainly fit that bill. It had crossed my mind that Elizabeth Jackson might have been the root cause of Harrington’s travels into Europe. Juliana was a clever woman, and I imagined that thought might also be occurring to her.

‘Because his mother did.’ It was an aggressive approach, but I wanted to get a reaction from Harrington. ‘She called on Elizabeth Jackson – just a day or so before she and your father died.’

‘But that would have been some time before this servant ran away from her house,’ Harrington said. His eyes were still fixed on mine, but I could make out nothing from his expression. ‘And I must say, it seems highly unlikely that my mother would ever call on a serving girl.’

‘That’s what I was told,’ I said. ‘Of course, it’s always possible that the person who told me was mistaken – people do get details muddled over time.’

‘Well, that must be the case. My mother might have called on a neighbour, but certainly not a maid.’

When he had finished speaking I saw his lips pinch together slightly, a downward frown of displeasure and irritation, and I had to stop myself from smiling in triumph. He knew I was questioning him, and I knew that he was hiding something. I would win this, I thought, for Elizabeth Jackson’s sake if nothing else.

Suddenly I felt a chill in the pit of my stomach. Harrington flinched, and his eyes drifted, looking confused for a moment. Then his spine stiffened as
something
shifted behind him – and then he refocused.

He frowned, picking up his knife and fork and cut angrily into the remains of his beef before thrusting a large chunk into his mouth. A greasy trickle of pink
liquid ran down to his chin as he chewed hungrily, but he ignored it. As his lips smacked together, it clung to the contours of his skin and slid down to his neck.

My eyes followed it, my attention focused on the blood so that I did not have to look at the darkness that was creeping up over Harrington’s shoulder. My heart raced and I swallowed hard as a black tongue smelling of something rotten darted around Harrington’s neck and squeezed like a garrote for a moment before pulling back, licking up the blood as it did so.

I was assaulted by the thick, sickly stench of stagnant water, which coated the back of my nose and throat, making me want to gag. My collar felt tight, and I could not catch my breath. What was that
thing
, that awful dark shape that was too dense behind him? The bulbous growth was just out of sight, but my eyes hurt just
trying
to look at it, the sharp pains stabbing behind my eyeballs forcing me to blink rapidly.

Harrington continued to eat, refilling his plate from the bowl of buttered potatoes in front of him and cramming them into his mouth two and three at a time. I had seen him eat like this before, and had thought there was something unnatural about it then. Now I knew why.

My ears buzzed with the noise of Juliana and Mary’s chatter, but I could not make out their words.
I felt distant from them, a world apart, as if I were lost under the Thames and they were still on the surface.

The
Upir
was showing itself. It clung to Harrington’s shoulder, dark talons gripping him as it peered around the back of his neck, an awful parody of a baby carried in a sling behind its mother, that style so often seen amongst the Orientals.

It did not emerge fully, and only one side of its face was visible. That eye came to rest on me and I could feel my heart pounding rapidly. I tried to stay focused on Harrington; unlike the red orb that glared angrily at me from the apex of his neck and shoulder, the man’s eyes were blue, and wholly human. I concentrated on them, rather than the awful wickedness in the corner of my vision, for I could not bear to look directly – even if I had had that desire, I
could not
, for it was death; it was madness; it was everything that was wrong with the world, all wrapped up into a dense black shape. The whole world’s shadow had been sucked into this awful clinging gargoyle. The head bobbed up slightly and the black tongue flicked out again, catching an invisible fly in the air, and then it hissed, and I felt a fine spray of poisonous spittle land on my skin. As the rotten stench of corruption assaulted me, bile rose up my throat and I fought not to be violently ill.