The Aylesford Skull (20 page)

MERTON’S RARITIES

M
erton’s Rarities, Thames Street, near London Bridge, was empty of trade and at first appeared to be closed for the evening except for a lamp glowing in the back of the shop, in what would be Merton’s workroom. Merton had been a purchasing clerk in the British Museum in his youth, and had established connections to various purveyors of antiquities and curiosities that were out of the regular line. Hence the clientele of Rarities was an eccentric lot. The shop, standing near the London Docks, was much frequented by sailors returning to port from exotic lands, looking to sell rather than buy, knowing that Merton would pay ready money for a well-preserved whale’s eyeball or stuffed ape, or better yet for something particularly out of the ordinary – clean human skeletons, well assembled, fetching upwards of sixty pounds these days and worth half that at wholesale.

St. Ives had heard that Merton did a fair trade in severed heads bought dearly from Paris, fresh from the guillotine and preserved in double-refined spirits. He rapped on the door now, loudly, peering inside past the skeleton of some variety of great ape – almost certainly an orangutan. To St. Ives’s certain knowledge, Merton was a cartographer, a forger, and a dealer in rare books as well as curiosities – in short, a good man to know under the right circumstances. A year ago Merton had passed on a valuable map to St. Ives, who had profited from it, and St. Ives was loathe to do him an injury now, or to confront him with anything having the odor of extortion. But time was short. Within the shop, all was silent and still. Behind them, a fog rose from the Thames, drifting inland.

If Merton weren’t in, then it was even odds he was either at home with Mrs. Merton eating an early supper, or else in his second shop open only to “the trade” – several subterranean rooms accessible from the back of a haberdashery on Threadneedle Street, where he kept certain species of merchandise well hidden. It was there that he was visited by hangman’s assistants trundling Saratoga trunks. St. Ives was determined to run him to ground tonight, and time was ticking away. He and Hasbro were meeting with two “stalwart friends” in a little over an hour at Billson’s Half Toad Inn in Smithfield, for supper and a council of war. The business at Slocumb’s had taken longer than he had hoped, but it had borne fruit, although whether pears or apples he couldn’t yet say.

Merton didn’t travel; he had told St. Ives proudly that he had never in his life been out of Greater London, except on occasion to visit various aunts and uncles in the Midlands, which scarcely counted as travel. The world came to
him
, Merton liked to say, rarely the other way around. St. Ives wondered whether to climb over the garden wall from the side street and force the rear door, the mountain coming to Merton, so to speak. Merton might easily be in hiding if he had got wind of St. Ives’s part in the notebooks fraud.

No sooner than he conceived the idea, however, than a shadow passed in front of the lamp in the workroom and remained there. St. Ives could just make out the half circle of Merton’s round face, looking out at them. The rest of him stood mostly hidden by the edge of the door. St. Ives waved at him, and after another moment Merton apparently identified them. He hurried forward, unlocked the door, and ushered them in, wiping his hands on a piece of towel and gesturing toward a little grouping of stuffed chairs and deal tables in an alcove in the front of the shop. His sparse hair stood up nearly straight on his head, a slump-shouldered man of perhaps fifty years. He wore thick spectacles, his eyesight the victim of the close work he did as a sometimes forger. His lab coat had once been white, but was a palette of colors now, and despite the towel his hands were stained from whatever task he had been up to in his workroom.

“Sorry to keep you gentlemen waiting,” he said. “A man can’t be too careful once the sun sets. Glass of something?”

“Nothing for me, thank you,” St. Ives said. “I don’t mean to turn down a pleasant offer, but we’re rather in a hurry, I’m afraid, and I for one need my sensibilities intact. We’ve urgent business to transact before we have the luxury of rest.”

Hasbro waved the offer away as well, at which Merton said that perhaps they wouldn’t mind if he took a dram. He poured a measure of whisky into a cut glass snifter, tipped a bit of water into it from a nearby bottle, and took an appreciative swallow and sat down. “I needed an excuse to be quits with the day,” he said, heaving a sigh. “How can I help you two?”

“We have business with Dr. Ignacio Narbondo,” St. Ives said flatly.

The smile left Merton’s face. He set the glass down on a table, sat back in his chair, pressed his hands together in front of his mouth and blew air through them. “I scarcely know the man,” he said.

“His own mother said the same thing to me just last night,” St. Ives said, “but you and I have both had dealings with him in one way and another.”

“Not for a
good
long time,” Merton said.

“We talked to Mr. Slocumb,” Hasbro told him. “Looked him up directly we got into the City.”

Merton blinked at him, considering this.

“He was of your same mind,” St. Ives put in. “When it comes to Narbondo, the less said the better. I understand that fully. But I have no time for scruples, Harry. My son has been kidnapped by the Doctor, early this morning. We believe him to be somewhere in Spitalfields. We’ll do our best to run him to ground tonight. You cannot help us there, of course, but I discovered at Slocumb’s that the mystery is deeper than I had thought. Under coercion he revealed the business of the lost steam launch and the contraband you attempted to smuggle into London...”

“I deny it!” Merton cried. “Smuggling, forsooth! Slocumb has misinformed you. He was ever the ungrateful...”

“No, sir, he has not misinformed us, and he seems to me to be a singularly forthright man. I threatened him, do you see? I offered to reveal the details of the Joseph Banks fraud to the Royal Society. That would have finished him, and I believe it would finish you.”

Merton looked at him in astonishment. “You’re a difficult man, Professor. I had no idea that an old friend of your standing would fling such a threat in my face after...”

“His son has been kidnapped by a murderer, sir,” Hasbro said, his voice like a sword thrust. “The boy’s life hangs in the balance.”

Merton seemed to catch his breath now, and he blinked heavily several times before picking up his glass and draining the contents at a gulp. “Just so,” he said. “I quite understand. I meant no...”

“We’re both in a difficult position,” St. Ives told him, “and might both do better if we were allies in this. I assure you that I have no distaste for honest smuggling when the need arises. I might ask you to arrange some such thing for me some day. What was it that the Doctor wanted transported into London?”

“A round dozen barrels of coal, taken out of a Neolithic cave very near the Normandy coast.”

“Coal? He could have purchased a hundredweight for a few shillings, delivered to his door.”

“This was... out of the ordinary coal, you might say. Lignite coal, to be certain, but an admixture of carbon, sulfur, old human bones, and other organic debris. Ancient human bones, I might add, kept dry and well preserved by the atmosphere in the cave. There was great expense involved; you would scarcely credit it if I told you.”

“
Your
expense, I understand, once the coal was lost, and not Narbondo’s.”

“Yes,” he said unhappily. “The business will come close to ruining me before it’s done.”

“I believe that Narbondo swindled you, Harry. I don’t know quite how, but I intend to find out before I’m through. Indeed, I believe that you and I are caught up in the same net. If I can save my son from his grasp, I’ll see whether I can recover something for you into the bargain.”

“Well,” said Merton, helping himself to more whisky, “I would take that as a kind gesture, certainly I would.”

“Good,” said St. Ives. “Then tell me one last thing. Have you heard of an object known as the Aylesford Skull?”

“Heard of it, yes. I have no idea of its existence, though rumors have arisen over the years. I have my ear to the ground, you know, and I hear all manner of things. To the best of my knowledge the story of the skull is fabulous, although if it existed it would be worth a fortune, and not a small one. No one has seen it or admitted to possessing it. And there’s never yet been a collector who didn’t eventually boast about his treasures, especially something of that magnitude. Human vanity requires it. If it were in someone’s collection, I would know.”

“But something
like
it, perhaps?” St. Ives asked. “A different example of a skull-lamp, so to speak?”

“Yes, certainly. Such things have been in the hands of collectors for hundreds of years. I’ve heard that they change hands for monstrous sums. The skull of the Duke of Monmouth was so altered. His head, you’ll recall, had been sewn back onto his body after his beheading in order for the corpse to sit for a portrait by Benson. It was removed again afterward and sent to France, where a renowned alchemist fashioned it into such a lamp at enormous expense, allegedly financed by some member of the family, possibly the Earl of Doncaster, although that’s mere rumor. It’s true, however, that the French are particularly keen on them. Marie Antoinette’s skull resides in a particular library in Paris, to my certain knowledge.”

“To what uses are these put, then? Merely decorative?”

“In a sense, yes,” said Merton. “They are so contrived as to project an image of the person the skull belonged to. It’s the image that’s decorative, if you follow my meaning.”

“An image like that of a so-called magic mirror?”

“Considerably more interesting. A moving image, I’m told, much sought after by spiritualists and by people who study the demonic. I’m afraid they’re rather out of my line, though – quite beyond my means despite being of varying quality. If they function at all – cast even a meager representation of a ghost – they had best be kept in a vault for fear of theft.”

St. Ives nodded. “Answer one last question if you please. Would the skull of a child be more valuable to those who fabricate these lamps than that of an adult human being?”

“Your own son?” Merton asked.

“Just so.”

He shook his head at the thought. “Childhood is a time of deep and changing emotion, great wonder, the spirit at its brightest. So, in a word, yes, although a head taken from any living body is similarly energized. It’s a matter of degree, I suppose.”

“A victim of the guillotine, perhaps?” Hasbro asked.

“Indeed,” Merton said. “And I’ll remind you that even a skilled fabricator is only occasionally successful. The reward is great, and there are many inept bunglers who hope one day to succeed. The traffic in potentially useful human skulls is vast, immense sums spent, the results for the most part coming to nothing.”

“Thank you, Harry,” St. Ives said. “I’m sorry to have threatened you. You can understand my need, however.”

“Indeed,” Merton said. “You might put your questions to our good friend William Keeble, by the way.”

St. Ives looked at him with evident surprise. “William Keeble cannot
conceivably
have any dealings with the sort of people who collect or purvey such things.”

“Oh, indeed not, Professor. I don’t mean to blacken the man’s reputation. But he successfully miniaturized what is referred to as a Ruhmkorff lamp. You’re familiar with them, no doubt? I’m told that the tiny Keeble variation is one of the marvels of the age, although I haven’t seen one myself. It’s said to sit neatly in the palm of one’s hand, and yet it projects an extraordinarily bright light.”

“And so it might lie within the cranial cavity of these reprehensibly contrived skulls?”

“Just so. I was given to believe that the commission came from a highly placed personage, although there was no mention of names, as you can imagine. Keeble might easily have been ignorant of the use that the lamp would be put to. He’s not a worldly man, Professor.”

Hasbro rose from his chair now and nodded toward the street. St. Ives glanced out, but saw nothing of interest. The evening outside was busy enough, with people on foot and carriages passing along Lower Thames Street. Stepping away from their small circle of light into the dimness of the ill-lit shop, Hasbro moved off silently, Merton and St. Ives watching as he made his way toward the shelter of an immense curio cabinet that cast a particularly dense shadow at the corner of the window. After a moment he retraced his steps, sat down in his chair, and said, “It’s our old friend George, sir.”

“You’re certain?” St. Ives asked him. “The last we saw of him he was unhorsed and flying into the shrubbery.”

“He’s making no effort to conceal himself.”

“Tenacious, bold fellow, our George. Alone, is he?”

“Yes, sir. Apparently, although it seems doubtful that he’s as bold as that.”

“He means to follow us, then, and not attack us, you mean?”

“Indeed –
has
been following us, obviously, since we lost sight of him on the Pilgrims Road.”

Merton was blinking at both of them. “
Attack
you? I don’t mean to hurry you away, but I’m late for an appointment. Oh my, yes, very late. Mrs. Merton will flay me alive with a serpent. I regret being inhospitable, but...”

“Quite right,” St. Ives told him. “We’re also on the wing.”

“I’ll just slip out the back,” Hasbro said, “and over the wall. Perhaps we can collar our man and have an informative chat.”

St. Ives nodded. “I’ll go out through the front door in two minutes’ time. We would be fools, however, to allow George to distract us as he has in the past. If we cannot collar him, we’ll let him go about his business and we’ll go about ours. We’ll see him again, and soon, I believe.” He watched as Hasbro disappeared toward the rear of the shop, and began mentally to count the seconds in the efficient manner he had learned as a schoolboy:
one elephant, two elephants, three elephants
...

Merton rose from his chair, bent over the back of it, and pulled out several painted sign-boards, choosing one from among them. “On Holiday,” it read. “I wish you the greatest luck in finding your son, Professor, and forgive me for reminding you of the promise you made to me this evening in regard to the money that was, I’m certain, stolen from me. I’m fearful that I’ve once again put my head in the noose. I believe you know the whereabouts of my second establishment?”