The Detective and the Devil (17 page)

‘What do you make, constable?’

‘What do I make?’

‘In salary. What are you
paid
?’

‘I am paid enough.’

‘Really? I suspect that is not the case, in fact. When you begin to suspect the same, come and see me.’

The clerk turned away, and rejoined the black-suited throng, just another among hundreds of careful, calculating men.

During these days of corresponding and searching and travelling, Abigail remained under the watchful eyes of Rat and Cripps and the other street boys. Occasionally their
numbers were supplemented by a Wapping constable on the orders of Harriott, who seemed determined to demonstrate his protectiveness towards Mrs Horton. But when she saw one of these men loitering
around in Lower Gun Alley, Abigail was wont to open a window and yell at him until he left, to the sniggers of the boys in the shadows and the dismay of the neighbours.

These neighbours knew that something was afoot with Horton and his wife, but they had long known that Charles Horton had an unusual job – was, indeed, an unusual man – and that his
wife was almost as odd. She kept a good clean house, that much could be said for her, but there were no children, and she read more books than was good for her – any learning garnered from
books and not experience was, to most of the denizens of Lower Gun Alley, cause for great suspicion. Some of the women of the street had complained to Horton directly about the boys who hung around
the place, and Horton pretended to hear their complaints and then ignored them. It was a fact, after all, that Lower Gun Alley was safer for everyone by being watched.

Rat’s adoration for Abigail only grew as the days passed. He accompanied her everywhere, and grew quieter and cleaner and altogether more acceptable as a companion. Abigail was teaching
him to read, an activity he clearly found astonishingly onerous but impossible to refuse, as it meant spending time in close proximity to and in conversation with the beloved Mrs Horton.

Abigail, for her part, admitted to finding the lad amusing, though Horton thought there was rather more to it than that. She had bought him new clothes and boots, such that Horton worried about
the fate of the boy when all this was over and he had to rejoin his street mates in his fresh and clean attire. But when he pointed this out to Abigail, her face became desolate, and he knew he had
opened a window she had deliberately closed. The question of Rat’s future was, for her, best ignored. She enjoyed the boy while she could, even introducing him to the pleasures of the Royal
Institution’s Lecture Hall, which he had judged to be
wondrously mesmerisin’
.

She continued to read about John Dee, and about that strange symbol which seemed to attract new significance with every day that passed, such that Horton began to understand how secret texts and
images could attract power just by their existence, by their promise of unifying explanations and underlying themes. The promises were empty, of course, at least in the realms of philosophy. But
somebody had drawn those symbols. The
Monad
, Abigail said the symbol was called – and it was created by Dee.

The newspapers were full of the quotidian gossip and business of the metropolis, with one persistent drum beat which grew louder and louder as May progressed towards June: the extraordinary
prospect of the wars with Napoleon recommencing. The emperor had left Elba, the little Mediterranean island which had been ceded to him by the European powers, three months before. In less than a
hundred days he had reassembled his armies and reinfatuated the French with his talk of Imperial glory. The British government had pledged tens of thousands of men and tens of thousands of pounds
to bring the French back to heel, and armies had been gathering, their swarms calculated in daily newspaper reports. Horton was struggling to keep the interest of his magistrate, John Harriott, who
seemed to have taken Napoleon’s activity as a personal outrage. Likewise the interest in the deaths of the Johnsons, and then of Amy Beavis, had sunk beneath the rising tide of a new
Francophobia. Napoleon seemed almost infernal in his resistance to defeat: an emperor who could not die and would not surrender until Europe burned beneath his cloven feet.

Edward Markland, similarly, had become less interested in the case after the embarrassment of his visit to the Home Secretary. The political appeal of solving the murders had declined along with
the public interest. There was no new London Monster, or so every day without another killing suggested. The only Monster was Corsican, not English.

A few days after his encounter with Putnam at East India House, as May drew to an end and June came in, Horton received a letter at the Police Office. It was from Charles Lamb.

The note had such frenzy that Horton feared a recurrence of Lamb’s mental disarray. He tried to decode what it might mean, Lamb being followed in this way. Had he himself
put Lamb in danger, when he had questioned Putnam in the way he had? Horton had been on high alert in its immediate aftermath, but had seen nothing suspicious. Was it just that the Company had been
waiting for things to settle down? Might the danger Lamb perceived be real? He felt the force of Lamb’s imagination and the shadow of his mania, projecting forbidding shapes into
Horton’s own mind.

There were three men standing at the bar of the Prospect. They were removing their coats, for the day was warm and inside the pub the air had become close and sticky. One of them rolled up his
sleeves before returning to his pint, and Horton saw an enormous tattoo snaking up his arm – literally snaking, for the tattoo depicted a blue-skinned serpent, an evil thing that was at once
ugly and beautiful. A reminder of his talk with Putnam.

He minded a man arriving in the pub, tall and out of place, his head turning as he looked for someone. It was Salter, the surgeon. He caught Horton’s eye and walked over to him.

‘Dr Salter,’ Horton said. ‘Were you looking for me?’

‘I was.’ Salter looked around once more, as if he feared every man in the pub might jump on him at once.

‘Can I fetch you a drink?’

‘No, indeed. I do not . . . partake.’

‘Well, then, please do sit.’

Salter looked at the chair opposite Horton. It did not impress him, but he carefully placed himself in it nonetheless.

‘I have some information,’ Salter said. ‘It relates to the odd smell we detected on the bodies of the Johnsons, and which you also reported at the home of Mr Beavis and his
daughter.’

‘Yes – the smell of bitter almonds.’

‘Exactly. Well, it reminded me of something, but I’ve been busy and had not the chance to pursue it. I also wished to consult with an acquaintance of mine. Do you know of Dr
Granville, physician in ordinary to His Highness the Duke of Clarence?’

Horton laughed, but seeing Salter frown he realised his mistake. Salter was not joking – he was honestly asking if Horton knew the physician to an HRH.

‘No, Salter. I do not know Dr Granville.’

‘Ah, well. Of course. Well, Dr Granville has been long interested in a substance named Prussic acid. Do you know of this, perhaps?’

‘No.’

‘It is a constituent part of the pigment Prussian blue. It is an unusual thing. It was first created in the last century by the Swedish chemist Scheele. He mixed Prussian blue with red
precipitate of mercury and water, boiled and agitated and filtered it, then poured it over iron filings and added sulphuric acid. He then distilled a quarter part of it, and made Prussic acid with
a mixture of sulphuric acid; the latter he removed using barytic water.’

Salter looked mesmerised. To Horton, he might as well have been speaking Greek.

‘Four years ago, Gay-Lussac in France perfected this technique, and created the purest form of Prussic acid yet seen. He calls it
hydro-cyanic acid
. Dr Granville is interested in
the medicinal properties of this substance – he believes it has great potential as a sedative, even more powerful, he says, than opium.’

‘And its relevance to the current case?’

‘Simply this: Prussic acid, or hydro-cyanic acid – whatever you wish to call it – has three distinct properties. One, it carries a strong smell of bitter almonds. Two, it has a
very low boiling point, and is gaseous at some 20 degrees Celsius. Three, it is
extraordinarily
poisonous. I believe it may have been used in the deaths of the Johnsons and, almost
certainly, in the deaths of the Beavises also.’

The information fitted, like an old key in a smooth lock, and Horton was grateful for it. But he wondered where it led him. He had suspected, of course, that the Johnsons and the Beavises had
been poisoned. Did knowing the mechanism make any difference? If a door had opened, did it lead anywhere useful?

Horton finished his ale and left the Prospect of Whitby with Salter, bidding the doctor farewell out on the street and thanking him for his information. He walked to the River Police Office, but
there he was interrupted by Edward Markland, who was just leaving after a meeting with Harriott. As Markland made his customarily superior greeting, the office porter handed Horton a note. Markland
watched him read the name of the sender on the envelope, and must have seen his face.

‘Who is it from, Horton?’ Markland asked, rudely. Horton swallowed his first impulse, which was to tell the man to mind his own business. However he had behaved these past weeks,
Markland was still his superior.

‘It is from Robert Brown, the librarian to Sir Joseph Banks,’ Horton replied.

Markland raised his eyebrows.

‘Indeed? You have an interesting correspondence, constable.’

He emphasised the word
constable
, as if reasserting a natural order. How on earth did one such as Horton come to be receiving letters from an esteemed man of learning like Robert
Brown?

Horton opened the letter, desperately wishing he could be somewhere else, but he was trapped – Markland wanted to see what was in the letter, now, and he had no way of refusing him. As he
read the note that feeling of loss of control deepened still further.

‘And what does Mr Brown have to say to Constable Horton, hmm?’

‘He requests that I attend Sir Joseph at his earliest convenience in Soho Square on an urgent matter relating to my wife.’

Markland’s face showed shock, followed by a kind of scandalised amusement.

‘Your
wife
, Horton? What on earth does Sir Joseph Banks have to do with your
wife
?’

‘I confess I do not know. But it appears she is already there.’

Abigail had been trying not to think about that last encounter with the doctor at St Luke’s, but every now and again the memory would intrude like a bad smell in a clean
kitchen. She filled her days with Rat – reading with him, shopping with him, attending lectures with him. It was, in many ways, a very pleasurable time, and she almost imagined that she did
have a son, that she and Charles were mother and father, but these happy thoughts only served to snag awful realisations: that her womb was barren, her life half-full, her mind preoccupied because
it had nothing to love other than her strange, unfathomable partner.

Her visits to St Luke’s had filled the spaces in which these thoughts tended to condense, but now that outlet was gone, leaving only that dirty sense of having been bitterly used by
Drysdale.

She needed to be
of use
. So she decided on a trip. She walked down to the Wapping stairs with Rat in attendance, and took a wherry. It was a sunny day, and the river was as bustling as
any London square or market. Voices called across the river from lighter to ship to barge, and their wherry made its way upstream following the same course her husband had taken to Putney. Abigail,
though, went further. The trip would take time, but she was in no hurry, and besides, she enjoyed watching the riverbank change its character, from the crowded wharves of Wapping to the colourful
splendour of the Tower and the City markets, and then the river widened out to the towers and roofs of Westminster and the fields of Chelsea. Then they were out in the country, on the same river
but also on an utterly different one.

They went past Putney, under its wooden bridge, the palace at Fulham passing by on their right as they entered the great river-loop around Barnes. Curious trees leaned into the river to see
their reflections as they passed, and as they approached their destination she saw a church tower and several roofs, one of them tall and steep and hard by the riverbank. The waterman tied up at
some steps down to the shore, and Rat jumped out first and held out his hand for her, ceremoniously. She stepped up onto the bank.

‘Will you wait?’ she asked the waterman.

‘It’s you as is paying me, missus,’ he said, and sat down in the boat. She turned, and faced John Dee’s house.

It was both bigger and smaller than she’d expected. The house itself was large, but the ground on which it stood was cramped by surrounding houses, most of which looked more recent. The
old house had a high roof, steeply pitched, like a country cottage though now tiled rather than thatched. On the other side of the path from the river stood a gate, and she remembered the story of
Dee standing in his doorway, and speaking to Elizabeth while she sat in a boat on the river. Abigail went through the gate, as the Queen had refused to do, and here was the door, a black and
ancient thing. Almost without thinking she knocked upon it, half expecting Prospero to answer in his wizard’s cloak, blinking with stars and planets.