The Aylesford Skull (25 page)

The wall before her was built of stone, stained black by years of grit. Further on lay the adjacent courtyard, which contained a warren of windowless shanties, what were called back-to-backs, leaning together around the perimeter like card houses, side by side and one atop the other, fading in the murk in either direction. The people dwelling in the depths must live in perpetual darkness, she thought – candles or lanterns day and night, although surely they could scarcely afford to buy either candles or lamp oil. Here and there windows were faintly aglow. A semblance of life was carried on within, entire families living in single rooms – many hundreds of lives having come to a standstill here in this place of darkness that was a biscuit toss away from the Royal Mint. Mother Laswell turned away unhappily, reminding herself that she was but one old woman in a city of millions, and that she had made a hash of her own family, or hadn’t prevented it from happening, and yet fortune had treated her well despite it, but leaving her with a deep sense of guilt that she wouldn’t cast off this side of the grave.

George opened a heavy door in the stone beneath the arch, nodding her into a little vestibule where a gas lamp threw out a sputtering glow. She climbed the stairs with a heavy heart and a sense of doom, hearing the door shut behind her, counting the sixteen stair treads that wound around on themselves, and finding herself in a passage that was richly decorated in its gaudy way, a stark contrast to the poverty below. She saw that George hadn’t followed, and was relieved.

Another door just ahead stood ajar, and she knew at once that it led into the room that overlooked the courtyard. Again it came into her mind that Narbondo had drawn her there: the men lounging in the street, George waiting to greet her, the door standing open before her now. The robbery of poor Edward’s grave and Mary Eastman’s murder had baited the trap, and now here she was, ten seconds from setting foot in it. If she walked away, she wondered, would he let her go?

But walking away wasn’t in her. She had come too far. She pushed the door wide and stepped through boldly, purposefully ignoring Narbondo who sat in a chair regarding her. She took in the room at a glance – the crates of books, the heaps of papers, the mean furnishings, the bare walls, as if the abode were merely temporary, the books and papers residing in the wooden crates that they had arrived in, ready to be carried out on the instant. She saw that a second immense window with curtains hanging to either side stood in the rear wall, bowed inward, weak with age. A second door, barred with a timber, stood adjacent to it, the window and the door looking back toward the hovels in the farther courtyard. Through the window she could see in the hazy moonlight what appeared to be the first few yards of a narrow, wooden suspension bridge leading away across the rooftops, or perhaps into a distant building.

There was a second room beyond the one in which she stood. Through its open door part of a long workbench was just visible, the top littered with tools and pieces of equipment that conveyed nothing to her mind. There were more wooden packing crates disgorging excelsior, and the place had an odious chemical reek. She heard what sounded like footsteps from within the room, someone pacing, and she got a brief glimpse of a man who peered out at her for an instant. It seemed to her that he wore a wig, and that his chin whiskers were false.

On the table, in front of her only living son, lay two plates, covered in broken meat and bones, potatoes and congealed gravy. She regarded Narbondo openly now. She compelled her mind into a cold objectivity, closed against sentiment. She could see in his face very little of the boy she remembered, which was hidden by a malignancy that he had purchased dearly over the years. He exuded an unnaturally vile essence – not an odor, but something very much like it – a palpable, repellent evil.

Her eyes returned to the table.
Two
plates? The man in the farther room, perhaps?

“My small houseguest,” Narbondo said to her, as if knowing what was in her mind. “I’ll introduce the two of you. Edward!” he cried, in a sharp voice.

The name electrified her. From the room beyond there appeared a small boy, four or five years of age, dressed in a white nightgown and black vest. He stood in the doorway, clearly hesitant to come any closer. He was apparently unhappy, although she saw something in his face that might be hope when he looked into her own. He was pushed from behind just then – she saw the sleeve of a black coat, perhaps velvet – and he staggered out toward the table.

“This is my beloved mother,” Narbondo said to the boy. “She hails from Aylesford, and is in fact a neighbor of yours. Say ‘good evening’ to her, Edward.”

“Good evening,” the boy said, and then, after staring at her for another moment, he turned sharply around and disappeared back into the other room.

“I was quite pleased when I discovered the boy’s name,” Narbondo said to her. “Not that the name Edward is in short supply. It’s serendipitous, though. You’ll agree with me there. Our own Edward come again, I thought when I learned of it.”

She stared at him for a moment without speaking, her wits fuddled by the boy’s being there at all. His presence changed things, and she made up her mind – remade it – abruptly. “What I think is of no concern to you,” she told him. “I’ll take the boy with me when I go. I won’t allow you to keep him, if that’s what you had in mind.”

“Not at all what I had in mind, mother. He’s not worth keeping. He’s a dull boy, says almost nothing, can barely read, cannot amuse himself. He can eat, but then a fly or a mouse can eat, so there’s nothing in it to recommend him.”

“What do you mean that he’s a neighbor of mine? Who is the child?”

“The son of a man called Professor Langdon St. Ives and his wife Alice, lately hailing from Aylesford, the old Walton estate. Both of them have long been treasured friends of mine, and so I’ve taken it upon myself to borrow their son. The Professor was at your house, I believe – what was once my house – on the evening of the night that I abducted the boy. He no doubt awoke to his loss in the morning. I very much wish I could have been there to witness it. There’s nothing more amusing than the face of someone happening upon dire knowledge. It effects a change that is imprinted on one’s features forever. My,” he said, smiling broadly now, “this is indeed splendid. Do you realize, mother, that this is the first conversation we’ve enjoyed together in... How long has it been?”

She didn’t answer, but set her parasol on the table and took her handbag from beneath her cloak. She reached into it calmly and drew out a pistol. It had belonged to her husband, and was many years old, although she had kept it clean and oiled so that the barrel wouldn’t be corrupted, and had actually shot it twice after Bill had come to the farm. She had managed to hit a large sunflower at five paces, blowing it to bits in a hail of seeds and petals.

“A flintlock, by heavens!” Narbondo said with mock approval. “
Very fine
filigree work. Primed and loaded, I suppose? Half cocked already, if my eyes don’t deceive me. Capital. It’s a foggy night, though, as you no doubt observed when my dear brother – your own Edward – put in his brief but entertaining appearance. You were wise to have stowed the weapon in out of the wet. Damp powder won’t answer, you know, no matter how badly you wish to murder your only living son.”

She said nothing, but kept her mind steady, concentrating on the thing she must do, reminding herself of the man’s manifold crimes, the murder of Edward and of Mary Eastman. Certainly he also intended to murder the poor boy in the other room – to make use of him as he made use of Edward. God knew how many others had suffered at his hand. She felt her own hand shaking, the now-heavy pistol dragging itself downward, and she firmed her grip and raised it again.

“Do you know that I once wept for the loss of your love?” Narbondo said to her.

She stared at him, confounded.

“I recall it with great clarity. It was when Edward was three years old, his birthday, and had acquired some resemblance to a human being rather than a mewling little beast. I felt the turning within you that day, your heart drawn to him, and my share diminished.”

“You imagined that, Clarence,” she said, using his Christian name and watching for any effect that it might have. It apparently had none, except for a thin smile, as if this were a bit of theater to him. She went on doggedly. “It was your imagining that made it so. You see darkness where there is light, and you revel in it. You much prefer the darkness. Perhaps you always did.”

“Those are hard words, Mother, coming from your mouth. I’m quite scandalized.”

“Nonsense. I can see in your face that you’re amused. You know that I speak the truth, and yet the truth is meaningless to you. You knew quite well what Edward’s death would do to me, and it was that very knowledge that prompted you. Mary told me that you capered around that tree like a mad thing, gibbering with glee. She could scarcely find the voice to describe it.”

“She could scarcely find the voice to say anything to anyone. Something put the fear into her, perhaps.” He grinned at her openly.

She raised the pistol, pointing it at his face, her hand shaking so badly now that she clutched her wrist with her free hand. She had been wrong. She
could
see something of the boy who had been her first son, the shape of the face, the fine, straight hair, the evident intelligence in his eyes – a faculty that he had squandered on wickedness. In her mind she pictured the sunflower, blown asunder...

“Return to Aylesford,” he said, the grin abruptly disappearing. “I have work to do. I grant you a boon. You’re free to walk out of this room now despite your waving that pistol at me, although I warn you that you should make haste. You’ve had your audience. Take yourself off, if you please.”

“As God is my witness I’ve come here to put an end to you before I walk out,” she said. “But I’ll do as you ask of me on the condition that I take the boy with me.”

“
Take
the boy? Aye, you can take him if you will. I’ll extend the same offer to you that I offered the boy’s father only this evening. You may purchase young Eddie for the sum of fifty thousand pounds. In that happy event he is yours to keep. You can negotiate with the boy’s family then, and perhaps turn a tidy profit. No? I thought not. You’ll put an end to nothing on Earth, Mother, not with a pistol. It isn’t in you to murder. It takes a stronger hand to...”

“Forgive me,” she muttered to God and to herself, cocked the pistol fully and pulled the trigger. Sparks flew from the gun’s muzzle and more from the flash hole, the shocking noise of the report taking her unawares. Through the sparks and smoke she saw Narbondo throw himself from his chair in the same instant that the window blew outwards in a hail of glass and splintered mullions. The shot had gone wide. She stood gaping, her mind stunned and with no thought of trying to reload the pistol: she would have no time for it, although she had a paper of powder in her handbag.

She was aware now of a vast clatter and shouting in the courtyard, what sounded like fighting. There was a pistol shot from below, and then another. Narbondo was rising from the floor, looking back at the open door. She thought of the boy Eddie, no doubt cowering in the other room, but before she could so much as take a step in that direction, there was a blur of movement before her – someone somersaulting through the shattered window, rolling hard into the table leg, snapping it off, the table aslant now, dishes clattering to the floor. The intruder was up and moving, dashing toward the second room and shouting “Eddie!” at the top of his lungs. There was an explosion from within the room – another pistol shot? – and then another.

In her shocked surprise she flung her own useless pistol hard at Narbondo’s face, clipping him over the eye, stunning him for the time it took for her to heave the canted table over into his path. He tripped over it and went down. She saw Edward’s skull tumble away into the fallen dishes and cursed herself for her haste. She let it lie for the moment and picked up a wooden chair, which she raised over her head to deal Narbondo another blow, but George came in at a run through the open door just then, carrying a truncheon, his face running blood, his hat gone, his shirt ripped open. She flung the chair at his chest, but he knocked it heavily aside with his forearm.

The acrobatic intruder – surely a boy, his face hidden by a ragged balaclava – came out of the room at a run dragging Eddie by the hand. The man in the velvet jacket appeared briefly in the open doorway and snatched at Eddie’s vest. He missed his mark, caught himself on the door casing with his free hand, and disappeared back into the room, as if he were too timid to come out.

The boy looked at George through the eyeholes in the balaclava, breaking toward the barred door and throwing something hard at the floor. There was the sound of an explosion, George reflexively falling into a crouch. Mother Laswell threw herself at George, her arms outstretched, the two going down heavily on top of Narbondo. She felt the hard corner of the table gouge into her side, a sharp pain in her ribs, George clawing his way out from under her while reaching for the fallen truncheon. She saw the boy unbar the door and fling it open. Along with Eddie he ran out onto the landing and was gone into the fog, all of it happening in the space of several seconds.

Mother Laswell snatched up the truncheon in the instant before George’s hand closed on it. She rose to her knees, hammering Narbondo and George with a flurry of blows, the sprung handle of the truncheon making it awkward in her grip, as if it were alive. But she heard the grunts, the men throwing their arms up to take the blows, cringing away from her. She rose even as she pummeled them, stepping clear of the table and the tangle of limbs.

She snatched at Edward’s skull, kicking it away as she did so, chagrined to see two teeth spin away from the open mouth as the skull rolled against the wall. A hand pawed at her foot, now, Narbondo shouting for help in an incoherent rage. She evaded him and went after the skull again, but George was there ahead of her, and she managed only to snatch up one of the teeth, spin on her heel, grab her parasol, and heave herself out through the now-open door with the last of her strength, intent on making away across the footbridge and into the dark safety of the blessedly foggy night.