The Aylesford Skull (34 page)

“The door stands open,” Tubby said in a low voice. He pointed with his cudgel at the arched door that led into Narbondo’s penthouse.

“They could be lying in wait,” Jack said, “knowing that we’d simply walk in. The open door is an invitation to an assault.”

“Then we’ll nail their ears to the breadboard and pitch the lot of them through the window,” Tubby said. He pushed the door open and they peered into the dark stairwell. The oil lamps were burned out, and all was quiet above, although they listened for a moment longer before climbing the stairs and walking into the empty room with its crippled table. A broken chair lay on the floor along with shattered dinner plates and splinters of wood and glass from the smashed window, through which the wind blew.

“Take note of that rope bridge,” Tubby said, nodding toward the window. “The door at the distant end stands open.”

“For my money they’ve gone off with no idea of returning,” Doyle said. “It’s little we’ll find here.”

“Here’s something curious,” Jack said, gesturing at the unbroken window opposite, which looked down toward Wentworth Street. Costermongers and a few carriages went up and down among early morning pedestrians. Two blue-coated soldiers on horseback stood on the far side of the street, apparently looking in the direction of the penthouse, which lay largely in shadow, and so there must be precious little that the soldiers could see. Even so, the three men moved away toward the farther room, where they would be entirely out of sight.

“I recommend moderate haste,” Doyle said, “and then away, perhaps across the very useful rope bridge.”

In the back room stood a workbench scattered with odd bits and pieces of things. Two small human skulls, both of them yellow-brown, cracked, and evidently ancient sat at the back of the bench. Both had been trepanned, the circular openings splintered, the skulls useful, perhaps, to hold morbidly decorative candles on a theatre stage, but not for Narbondo’s fell purposes, given St. Ives’s description of the lamps. Alongside the skulls, in a scattering of excelsior, lay pieces of exposed glass photographic plates, small screws and bits of sheet copper, and – strangely – odds and ends of shell casings and lead bullets lying in a heap of what appeared to be gunpowder, as if someone had been loading cartridges.

“There’s an odd smell here,” Tubby said. “Rather like garlic.”

“White phosphorous,” Doyle said, pointing at a porcelain dish with a heap of white dust in it. “Extremely flammable. Highly regarded by anarchists these days, by the way. There are photographic chemicals here also.” He picked up two green-glass, capped bottles and then set them down again. “Ferrous sulfate and potassium cyanide,” he said. He held up a piece of one of the photographic plates and scrutinized it. “Here’s the negative image of a boy’s face in profile.”

“I believe it’s Eddie’s likeness,” Jack said, looking at it. “Why, though?”

“To make the ransom demand more tenable, perhaps,” Doyle said. “They must have had a darkroom assembled, which of course they took away with them.”

“Let’s
pray
it’s to make the ransom demand more tenable, and not for some other bloody purpose,” Tubby said. “I don’t like this business of the decorated skulls. St. Ives seemed to think that vast sums of money are involved, enough to make child murder seem like a trifle.”

“Here now!” Jack said, reaching into the debris beneath the bench and picking up a small object. “A signet ring, by God. An eagle clutching the letter M in its paws. Highly stylized, but moderately plain for all that. It might belong to anyone.”

Tubby nodded sagely. “One would suppose that all signet rings belong to someone, Jack. I’m going to guess that this particular ring was lost by a man whose name begins with the letter ‘M.’ That excludes our friend Dr. Narbondo. Keep it safe, however.”

There was a clattering from the direction of Wentworth Street, and Tubby stepped out into the adjacent room again to have a look, leaving his two friends to continue their search. “A carriage has arrived,” he said through the door, “accompanied by two more soldiers aboard horses. The door swings open. By God, it’s Keeble’s Dutchman from the look of it, our man de Groot. Tremendous large head with the eyes of a pig. He’s evidently coming on alone. Why would the man do such a thing when he’s brought four soldiers with him?” Tubby walked back into the room.

“I’ll warrant he wants this very ring,” Jack said. “He’ll summon the soldiers quickly enough when he discovers we’re here. Out the back, I say.”

“Nonsense,” Tubby said. “We’ll parlay with the man. Certainly he’s a reasonable creature. The Dutch are great thinkers, although I’m told that they make their shoes out of wood. You two go about your business. I’ll play the man a bit of a prank when he arrives and then we’ll engage him in edifying discussion.”

Silence fell and then there was the sound of a door closing – Tubby stepping outside onto the bridge landing so as not to be seen – and then, very shortly, footfalls on the stairs. De Groot, if he was indeed the man who had purchased the miniature lamp from William Keeble, strode into the room, saw Doyle and Jack looking back at him, and at once drew a small pistol from beneath his coat. He was indeed a heavy-bodied man, dressed in a sack coat and with a deerstalker cap perched on his round head. He wore side-whiskers but no mustache, and had a tiny, pointed beard at his chin. His hair was theatrically red.

“I’ll relieve you of the ring you’re clutching, sir,” he said, looking at Jack’s closed fist. “Immediately, or I’ll have you taken up for trespass and theft. There are four soldiers waiting in the road. Come, what business do you have here?”

“By God I own this building, sir,” Jack lied. “Who in the devil are you?”

“The man who has come to collect a signet ring that does not belong to you.”

“Then to whom does it belong? There’s been considerable deviltry here, and I’d like to have a word with any witnesses.”

“It gives me great pleasure to tell you to mind your own business,” de Groot said. “You lie copiously. Give me the ring immediately, or I’ll summon my men.”

Tubby walked silently in behind de Groot at this juncture and hammered him on the back of the head with the cudgel. Jack moved forward and caught the falling pistol nimbly, pocketed both the pistol and the ring, and then stepped back out of the way as de Groot slowly collapsed onto his side in a heap.

“What about the horsemen?” Doyle asked.

“Still waiting patiently, God bless them,” Tubby said, “although their patience no doubt has its limits.” He bent over and wrenched off de Groot’s coat, the man’s limp arms swinging upward and then flapping to the ground again. He moaned and turned onto his back, his eyes shut, breathing heavily. Doyle pulled one eye open with his thumb, exposing the white of the rolled-back eyeball. Tubby searched the coat pockets, drawing out a purse and a sheaf of papers bound up in ribbon before flinging the coat into the corner of the room. “What are we looking for?” he asked.

“We don’t know,” Jack said. “Bring the lot.” Doyle stepped past them into the front room in order to take another look out of the window.

“We’ll take his purse into the bargain,” Tubby said to Jack. “I rather fancy the coat, too, but it’s an ironclad rule of mine that I don’t dress in my victim’s clothing.”

“One of the soldiers is climbing down from his horse,” Doyle said to them. “He’s pointing this way, having a word with the others. We’d best be off.”

“Hell and damnation,” Tubby said. “No time to drop our man headfirst into the courtyard?”

But de Groot was moaning where he lay and shuffling his feet, and Jack and Doyle were already heading toward the door that led out onto the bridge. Tubby followed, the three of them making their awkward way, high above the courtyard, the boards beneath their feet bobbing and swaying. Tubby lifted his hat to a young woman walking below, and then the three of them went through the open door and into the shadows, where they stopped for a moment to look back. There was movement through the broken window of the penthouse, and the sound of someone calling out tentatively – the soldier quite possibly, not wanting to offend de Groot, perhaps, by bursting in unannounced.

Doyle led the way downward and out into the alley again, the three of them moving away to the west as hurriedly as they could without calling attention to themselves, out onto Whitechapel Road and away toward Smithfield.

* * *

“Lord Moorgate, certainly,” Jack said, shuffling through the papers. “Mr. de Groot seems to be privy to the man’s most particular business. But what the devil is Moorgate up to?”

“Skullduggery, I don’t doubt,” Tubby said. “I have nothing but respect for your typical politico, and very damned little of that. I wish Doyle would work his magic on that cipher. I’m clemmed. I could eat a cow. We’d best be on our way as soon as he translates it, and so I’m leery of waiting breakfast on the man. We might all go hungry, which would be criminal.”

As if in answer, Henry Billson came out of the kitchen carrying a plate on which sat a stuffed pastry shaped like a circular Greek temple, with columns around the outside and a fleur-de-lis atop. It was baked to a golden brown, and the steam smelled of goose liver and bacon. Billson set it atop the table in front of Jack and Tubby and dusted his hands.

“Strasburg pie,” he said, “and kickshaws just finishing in the oven – Welsh rabbit, curry tarts, and, as another remove, a plate of cold oysters that Henrietta brought back from Billingsgate just this instant. I figured that you gentlemen might be peckish, but perhaps I should wait on the kickshaws until Mr. Doyle returns, if I can keep ’em hot.”

“God bless you, William,” Tubby said, “but Mr. Doyle might be hours yet. And he’d sooner starve than abandon his work. Bring out the lot of it, along with a spoon, if you will, so that Mr. Doyle can scrape up the crumbs if he comes too late for the feast. And send poor Hopeful out with an ewer of the Half Toad’s best ale, if you would. We’ve got a long day ahead, and we need sustenance. We’re bound for the Cliffe Marshes to exterminate vermin.”

When Billson had gone off to the kitchen, Jack said, “What I read in the news about Lord Moorgate leads me to believe that he’s no good, but I don’t know quite why. He seems a pompous ass to me, prating on about other people’s faults as if he has none of his own, and with no apparent goal but to puff himself up at another’s expense. He despises Gladstone; that much is evident.”

“His brand of Whiggery can’t tolerate Gladstone’s concern for the Irish,” Tubby said. “I know him from White’s. He’s a bottomless pit of stinking lucre. He once wagered three-thousand pounds that Morris Whitby, the Drury Lane agent, would be sick at the stomach within a quarter of an hour. Said he could tell from the pallor of the man’s face and the look in his eye. Lord Bingham took the bet and lost it again before they’d sunk their first glass of champagne. Poor Whitby began to act the part of a cat puking up a hairball and then set in to spewing his guts. Disgusting business. Krakatoa ain’t in it. I heard from Wickham that Moorgate had dosed Whitby’s gin to set it up, although Moorgate denied it, all the time grinning like a devil. Whitby threatened to sue, but there was no evidence. I wouldn’t play cards with the likes of Moorgate, but then he wouldn’t play cards with the likes of me, I suppose. I can easily imagine him consorting with Narbondo, although it would be the end of his reputation if it were known.”

The ale appeared, nearly a gallon of it, and they breakfasted on the Strasburg pie and made inroads into the heap of oysters, which were indeed cold, Billson having the wonderful habit of layering the shells atop foundations of chipped ice.

“Perhaps we can set about destroying Moorgate’s reputation if there’s something damning in the cipher, which there must be, given that it’s signed ‘Guido Fox,’” Tubby said. “‘Guy Fawkes, ’twas his intent, to blow up the King and Parliament,’” he recited. “But they can’t be serious about blowing up the King, because there ain’t one.”

“Even if there were something to implicate Moorgate in de Groot’s papers, he would claim that the ‘Guido Fox’ signature was a mere lark. And in any event nothing means anything unless Moorgate is particularly identified in it, and if it’s evidently criminal.”

“The signature is too clever by half. The police love the clever ones, Jack. It’s the plain, stable sort of criminal who confounds them – the cheerful gent who lives in a cottage by day and turns into a murderer by night. Clearly this bunch has explosives on the mind, however – anarchy, perhaps, or this fabulous scheme of Narbondo’s to hobnob in Hell, if we can credit it.”

“St. Ives credits it, or at least believes that some such thing is coming to pass, and that’s good enough for me.”

“Then I’ll celebrate your sagacity by sampling the tarts and the Welsh rabbit, if only to make sure that they’re up to Billson’s usual standard. I suppose it’s only fair that we lay aside a crumb or two for poor Doyle, given that he’s doing the real work.”

“Here’s our man now,” Jack said, nodding in the direction of the stairs.

Tubby poured ale into Doyle’s glass and said to him as he sat down, “Jack was hungry as a wolf, and I was forced to prevent him from swallowing the entire breakfast and then eating the table into the bargain. What did you discover?” He heaped food onto Doyle’s plate and handed him his fork.

“It was a simple transposition cipher,” Doyle said, giving each of them a sheet of foolscap with two paragraphs written out on it. “The letters were separated into five lines and were often mingled with musical notes, which was confounding at first, but they gave the business away when I realized that they must be transposed along a five-line staff, do you see, like a piece of music, and not the usual three-line arrangement.”

“Fascinating,” Tubby said. “Eat up, old man. Time is passing.”

“The notes were superfluous to the meaning,” he said, “meant to confuse, although I saw something in them, and I suspected that ‘Guido Fox’ was a little too proud of himself. The notes were transposed in a manner of their own, distinct from the verbiage, but when it was all shifted along the five-line staff, you could sing the result in the manner of the old Irish Guy Fawkes song, ‘The Ballynure Ballad.’”