The Dickens Mirror (22 page)

“
So?
Have Weber meet them then.”

“Well, I can’t do that, sir. Mr. Connell confined him to his rooms and—”

Kramer cut her off with a blue string of curses, quite a few of which Bode hadn’t heard, and being a foundling, he’d heard
plenty
. Running down, Kramer shouted, “I don’t bloody care if he’s in bed, pulling his bloody
pudding
, you get Weber this instant!”

“I … I … I …” Bode could imagine Graves opening and shutting her mouth like a flounder. If he hadn’t been so spooked, he might really have enjoyed this moment. Graves finally managed, “It’s not my place, sir, to drag Mr. Weber out of his bed, and
most especially if he is engaged in, as you say so euphemistically, pulling his
pudding
.”

“Then send someone else! Send a man!”

“That’s why I’ve come, sir. Since I can’t locate Bode and the others are all occupied—”

“
Goddamn
! Very well. Meme, clear this mess while I’m gone. Come along, Mrs. Graves, and let us track down the elusive Bode.”

A FEW SECONDS
passed, during which time Kramer’s voice receded, then disappeared. Then Meme’s voice reached him from beyond the screen. “You can come out now.”

Cheeks burning, he did. “Meme.” He wasn’t sure what to say next.
Thank you? I’m sorry? I wish I’d not heard any of that? Why do you let him treat you that way?
He surprised himself. “I should’ve helped you, done something.”

“Absurd.” Her face was an unreadable mask, those dark eyes so like sockets it was like looking at a beautiful stone statue. “I am not Elizabeth. You would have been a fool to interfere.”

“But if he’d”—
tried to have his way with you, gone further
—“I would have.”

“If that makes you feel better.” When he opened his mouth to reply, she shook her head. “You need to go. They will be down a floor by now. You can say you were on the incurables ward.” She turned aside. “Anyway, I have a mess to clean.”

“Meme,” he began … and then left it. What was there to say? Only when he turned to go did he remember the damned glasses still tucked in his secret inner pocket.
Leave them go for the time being
. He’d sneak them back later. For now, he had enough problems.

Bricky

“SEE THOSE HAIRLINE
fissures?” Battle tilted his head at a column supporting Bethlem’s stone pediment. “A few more strong quakes and this building comes down.”

“Yes, sir.” Thinking,
Oh, can’t you shut yer yap for five minutes, ya nob?
He was irritable, on edge, though all should have been right with the world. After stitching Doyle’s wound, Kramer had Meme give him two cups of very strong, very sweet tea laced with something to settle his bowels, and several biscuits. As a result, Doyle’s guts had ceased yammering; his belly was full, and he’d had a powerfully satisfying shit.

It was the girl that bothered him. He wondered if she’d be all right. Hadn’t liked when Kramer hit her.
Shoulda done something
. What he really wanted was to chuck it all and go back there, knock Kramer in the teeth, and take that girl away.

Bricky Sir Lancelot
. He tightened the strap of his constable’s helmet until his tongue mashed against the roof of his mouth.
As if I’m such a prize
.

“Doyle.” Battle gestured at thigh-high drifts along the drive
that led to the Lambeth Road gatehouse. “Be a good man and blaze our way, would you?”

I’ve an idea: whyn’t you take that bull’s-eye of yours and blaze a trail up ya bunghole, ya mutton-shunter?
“Oh yes, sir. Right away.” Strapping his own lantern to his belt, Doyle slid back the shade. A beam of fuzzy yellow light punched the gloom, illuminating slants of falling snow. As he broke trail, snow immediately worked its way into his heavy police-issue boots and began to melt into his socks.
Oh, I hope someone commits a crime
. He bent against cuts of wind that hacked his cheeks. Icy grit pecked his eyes.
Give me an excuse to be off and leave this nob
.

Now, now
. Black Dog chuffed its strange hound’s laugh.
Contain yourself, darling. If you’re determined to do as that doctor wishes, you need Battle
.

He didn’t bother with a reply. Of
course
, he knew that. But oh, what he wouldn’t give to allow his tongue free rein, say whatever popped out, duty—and
Kramer
and
Battle
and
all
of them—be damned.

“Oh, good God, would you look at that?” The inspector lifted his chin to point toward the guardhouse. “Shall we lend a hand, Doyle?”

Ahead, Doyle saw that at the entrance gate immediately adjacent to the guardhouse, a pushcart blocked the way, having sunk under its own weight. The cart now listed to the right at such an acute angle that several burlap sacks had slithered to the snow. A few had split to spill their contents. One of the two … men? boys? … he couldn’t tell—one must have taken a fit or fallen, because he lay in the snow, his back resting against a wheel, while his companion crouched by his side. A smaller figure hovered uncertainly by the cart. A few feet away, the asylum guard only stood at the
threshold of his gatehouse, lantern in hand. He made no move toward the cart at all. Considering what was in those sacks, Doyle wouldn’t have been eager to lend a hand either, if not for Battle.

Oh, bloody excellent
. “Of course, sir.” He’d learned: when a superior says
we
, he really means
you
. Jogging up to the cart, he called, “Police. Do you need help?”

“Oh,” said the one boy still on his feet, and that was when Doyle realized that he was looking down into the gaunt, hollow-eyed visage of a girl. Backhanding a coil of honey-blonde curls that had come loose of her green muffler, she tried to fix a smile on blue lips that trembled. “Thank you, yes, a little.” She cast a dismal look at her strewn cargo. “I guess we didn’t stack them very well and then that earthquake …” A helpless look at her companion. “He slipped,” she said, then added, quickly, “It’s not rot, I swear.”

“Stop fussing. I’m fine,” said the boy, who looked to be the same age and equally thin, with a fringe of kinky brown hair showing beneath a fraying wool cap. He daubed the back of a hand at a rivulet of black blood oozing from a nostril. “A little dizzy, that’s all. I’ll be … 
No
.” Cringing, he warded the girl off. “
Don’t
touch me.”

“Here, she doesn’t mean any harm, I’m sure.” Doyle frowned. “I think she only wants to help.” He cast a glance at the smaller figure and now saw that it was a much younger girl. From her size, he thought she might be … ten? Twelve? Dark eyes wide above a thick shawl, the girl hadn’t opened her mouth or moved a muscle. Well, judging from that large, rough plaster on her chin, probably got herself a nasty gash there. Perhaps the little girl had already been knocked about enough, and knew to hold her tongue.

“Begging your pardon, Constable, but what do you know about anything?” Working his jaw, the boy hawked up a foamy gobbet that glimmered a dark purple in lantern light. “All of you,” he said, breathlessly, “can’t you leave me be a moment?”

“Tony,” the girl began, as Doyle, suddenly alarmed, backed up a step and said, “Just a moment, are you
certain
he doesn’t—”

“Oi!” At the sight of the boy’s bloody spittle, the asylum guard suddenly came alive and brandished a stout club. “I knew it, I
knew
it! You got the rot, boy, doncha? You turn round right now, march yourself—”

“I don’t have rot.” The boy gestured at the sacks on the snow. “And look for yourself: none of those sacks is marked with a red X. We don’t truck in infected.”

“
I’m
not checking those.” The guard waggled the club. “Go off with you now.”

“No,
please
,” the older girl said. “He’s telling the truth. Tony doesn’t have rot, just a bad cough, and the sacks are safe. Please, let us pass so we can collect—”

“The only things you’re
collecting
are these dead ’uns and taking them and your arses off asylum property,” the guard fumed. “No
cough
or
cold
makes a boy
that
sick.”

“It does if you’re
starving
,” the girl said fiercely. She gave the guard’s belly a pointed glare. “Of course,
you
wouldn’t know much about that, would you?”

“Leave it, Rima,” said the boy, Tony.

The guard drew himself up. “Listen, ya little dollymop, don’t you be mafficking with—”

“Oh, shut your yap, man.” It was Battle. “Can’t you see the poor boy’s thin as kindling? If you’re too much the coward to check for squirmers, I’ll do it.” Ignoring the spluttering guard,
Battle unbuckled his bull’s-eye lantern and crouched.

“Mind your face, sir.” Doyle shifted his weight as Battle fished out a telescoping pencil. Nothing was worth risking a squirmer drilling its way through your eye. The only bright side: if a squirmer started munching away at the inspector, that certainly solved the problem of going around the man for what Kramer fancied. He held his breath, ready to run.

“Nothing.” Battle gave the mess a thorough stir. “Not a single squirmer.” Stabbing his pencil into snow to clean it, Battle butted the silver case to size and looked up at the guard. “Put that club down, man. The sooner we put this cart to rights, the faster they can be on their way, and so may we.”

“It’s not
my
place,” the guard grumbled. Taking himself back to his gatehouse, the man folded his arms over the hump of his belly. “I got my duties, and they
don’t
include lending a hand to no rats.”

Ignoring the guard, Tony said to Battle, “It’s all right, sir. We can manage. We didn’t mean to cause trouble.”

“And you haven’t. Up you go.” Offering his hand, Battle helped the boy stagger to his feet, then bent to rummage in churned snow behind a wheel. “Hold on. Don’t imagine you’d want to leave this behind,” he said, coming up with a smaller sack. “You know this drawstring’s no good. Gaping wide open.”

As Battle gave the sack an experimental bounce, the youngest girl, the one with the plaster over her chin, let out a sudden, small, mousy sound. Doyle saw that her eyes had gone so wide they looked like holes in a white sheet. “Is she all right?” Doyle asked.

“Oh yes.” The older girl, Rima, dropped a hand on the girl’s shoulder. It might have been a trick of the light, but Doyle
could’ve sworn Rima’s fingers dug in the little girl’s arm, as if in warning. “She’s fine.”

“Thank you for fishing out that sack, sir.” The boy made a move to take the burlap sack from Battle but stopped short as the inspector pulled open the bag.

“What you got in here?” Battle said, peering inside. “Victuals?”

“Uh … you know, nothing special,” Tony said, tucking his hands in his coat. “The usual.”

Oh yeah?
Doyle watched the boy fidget.
Musta stolen something. Bad luck, running into the police
.

“That so?” Frowning into the sack, the inspector paused, then said, “This is all you’ve got to eat? A morsel of bread, a scrap of cheese?”

“Uh …” The boy blinked, as if this was something he hadn’t expected Battle to say. A look of surprise spread over his face. “Yes, sir.”

“Well, you’ll need more than that. A good drawstring would do, for starters.” Cupping the bottom with a massive hand, Battle handed the sack over with some care. “Do be cautious. If that’s all you’ve got to last the day, you wouldn’t want that bag to grow legs.”

“No, sir.” The boy quickly but carefully tucked the sack into a corner of his cart. “Thank you.”

“Indeed. Well, let’s get you loaded and on your way.” Battle turned to Doyle. “Don’t just stand there, Constable. Snap to.”

“Yes, sir.”
Oh, thank you so very much
. He threw a look at a long sack draped over the snow. The bony twig of a leg and bare foot protruded from a split seam.
A trio of rats moving dead meat … just the topper of a perfect day
. He snapped his fingers at the younger girl. “You there. Come over, give me a hand here.” When she only stood, he said, “What’s wrong with you? You soft?”

“Constable,” Battle began.

“Never mind about her.” It was the older girl, Rima, the one with the honey-blonde hair. She came to stand between Doyle and the younger girl. “We’ve only just taken her in. She’s mute. I’ll see to her. Come on.” Rima steered the girl away. As they passed, the younger girl’s eyes jumped like scared little rabbits from Doyle to the snow. “Mind where you’re going,” Rima said, though she didn’t sound cross. “You stay by me. I’ll put what bodies have spilt back in, and then you sew.”

By the cart, Battle said to the boy, “You don’t think you’re a touch overloaded?”

“No.” Arming blood from his lips, Tony trudged to a sack from which an arm spilled. When he bent, Doyle caught the yellow glint of steel from an enormous blade secured to the boy’s waist by a leather strap. Damn if that boy’s chopper wasn’t as long as a dirk. “They’re really not all that heavy,” Tony said as he inspected a long tear. “We try to stick to them that’s no more’n bones. Easier that way, what with us two. Well …” He glanced at the mute girl, who’d hunkered down next to Rima. “Three now.”

“Perhaps.” Frowning, Battle fished out a long spiked tool Doyle recognized and touched a gloved finger to a thick iron hook with a downward curve. “What is this?”

“It’s a pike, sir,” Doyle said. “We used ’em for rolling seals, hooking slabs of whale blubber. Sometimes the odd, very large fish.”

“Yeah, we got two,” Tony said. “Easier than your bare hands.”

“Really?” How was it Battle managed to sound both surprised and suspicious? “Refresh my memory, Constable, I forget: how many years at sea were you?”

“Only the one, sir. Right afore I came down to London.
Shipped out of Peterhead.” God, he hoped that was what he’d put down on his application.

“Fascinating.” Slipping the pike back onto the flatbed, Battle said to the boy, “Let’s try repositioning, shall we? With your permission?” When Tony waved his hand,
be my guest
, Battle took hold of a corpse that was a touch longer than its neighbor and hefted it as easily as a broomstick.