The Harvest Man (23 page)

K
ingsley paused outside the Whistle and Flute and mustered his resolve. He had much to do today and there really wasn’t time for this particular errand. But if what Hammersmith had told him was true—and he didn’t doubt it; Nevil Hammersmith was among the most straightforward and guileless people Kingsley had ever known—this was important, too. He wondered where Henry was. The giant would be a comforting presence this morning, but Kingsley’s assistant had not shown up at the office. The doctor assumed he was with Day and his family or perhaps somewhere with Hammersmith. It wasn’t like him, though, to be absent without leaving some token, a message with a nurse or a student.

Kingsley focused his attention on the sign above him while he lit his pipe. The faded and peeling sign showed the two musical instruments crossed over the front of a suit of armor. An optimistic twist on the Cockney rhyming slang for the word
suit
. His first match sputtered out before the pipe was lit and Kingsley snuffed it between his fingers. It took two more matches to get the thing going. He deposited the spent matches in his pocket and found the letter Nevil had given him, then he stepped forward and pushed the front door open.

Although the pub was apparently open for business, it was not bustling with clientele. Kingsley was certain the door only remained unlocked so that the unsavory people who used the place as an office could have free access. There was a barmaid hard at work cleaning chairs and tables, or at least circulating the dirt on them with the use of a filthy rag. She looked up at him with a scowl. He waved her off and she went back to her ineffectual occupation with a shrug. The only other person in the room was a sinister-looking man in the far corner, reading a newspaper in the shadows. It probably wasn’t good for his eyes, but Kingsley decided he’d keep that advice to himself. The man didn’t look like he much cared.

Kingsley made his way over to the man and stood at the table until he put his newspaper down and looked up.

“Yer in the wrong place, mate,” the man said. “Move along.”

“Do you, by chance, go by the name Blackleg?”

“Aye. I do.”

“Here.” Kingsley held out Hammersmith’s letter of introduction and Blackleg took it. He looked it over and tossed the letter on the table. It landed atop the abandoned newspaper. He pushed out a chair with his foot and Kingsley sat across from him.

“Your friend Hammersmith presumes an awful lot,” Blackleg said. But he was chuckling, a broad smile only partially hidden behind his bushy black beard.

“I’m offering my services,” Kingsley said. He puffed on his pipe. “Take them or don’t, I have other things I ought to be doing right now. I have the body of a murderer on my table. I have a victim, a separate victim, the subject of some other murder entirely, whose face has been peeled off. He’s on another table. I have the corpses of two retired Scotland Yard inspectors to look at. One killed himself in prison. I’m told he swallowed his tongue. The other was stabbed to death on the front steps of my good friend’s home. For his sake, I’d like to get to that one first. Besides all that, I have three bodies dredged up by the river police in the night, a child strangled in Coventry, and a woman who was crushed and then ripped in two when she fell off the dock in the path of an arriving skiff that scraped her along the pilings. I have a very busy morning ahead of me. So make no mistake, this is a favor I’m doing for Mr Hammersmith, not for you.”

Blackleg sat back and regarded Kingsley for a long moment while smoke wreathed the doctor’s head, then he nodded and leaned forward, clasping his hands on the table.

“Would you have a drink with me?”

“No, thank you,” Kingsley said. “As I said, I’m in rather a hurry this morning. I have—”

“Things to do, aye. Heard that. Our mutual friend says you’re a doctor.” He glanced at the letter next to his folded hands. “So answer me this: Why didn’t he send the police? Why a doctor?”

“What would the police do in a case like this?”

“I ’spect they’d take the bodies of my friends away from me and stick ’em in some mass paupers’ grave.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what they’d do. If they didn’t bring them first to me for my analysis.”

“I don’t want that to happen. The paupers’ grave or you pokin’ round their innards. I don’t like it.”

“And our friend Mr Hammersmith knows that. That’s why he sent me here, instead of them.”

“You’re better’n ’em?”

“No. But I don’t bury people in mass graves. And I don’t perform unnecessary autopsies. Our friend knows that.”

“He’s a good chappie, that Hammersmith.”

“I’m fond of him myself.”

“So what do you plan to do, then?”

“I’ll tell you what I’d ordinarily do,” Kingsley said. “Under other circumstances, I would bring a large number of policemen with me and I would remove from you the bodies Mr Hammersmith claims you have in your possession, whether you liked it or not, and as far as I’m concerned you could go to hell. You are a criminal and I don’t owe you a thing. But I owe the dead some justice.”

Blackleg stared at him, his eyes hot and angry under a jutting brow. His single eyebrow stretched across his forehead, highlighting a purple vein that throbbed at his temple. Finally, he threw his head back and laughed. Kingsley jumped in his seat and looked around, but the barmaid didn’t react in any way. She was obviously used to Blackleg’s theatrics. Kingsley sat back and concentrated on keeping his pipe lit.

“You’re all right,” Blackleg said at last. “Got a bit o’ pluck. I like that.”

“I’m thrilled.”

“So that’s what you would do. In other circumstances, like you say. But what do you actually plan to do?”

“The murderer is caught,” Kingsley said. “And killed.”

Blackleg leaned back. The chair groaned under his weight. “Killed?”

“Last night. Our Mr Hammersmith and Inspector Day—”

“I know ’bout him. He’s friends with Hammersmith.”

“Yes. And my friend as well. And between them, they’ve dispatched the man who killed your friends. The three women you’ve got underground somewhere. That’s the murderer I told you I have on my table right now. His name was Alan Ridgway.”

“Killed ’im.” It wasn’t a question. “Shot, stabbed, beat? What was it?”

“Shot. Day’s bullet seems to have flattened against the villain’s skull and traveled round his scalp under the skin. It lodged between his eyes. He bled to death fairly slowly, all things considered.”

“Serves the bloody bastard right, too. How’d our boy Hammersmith find him? He’s a detective, he is. Or he would be if they recognized him right.”

“Actually, neither Mr Hammersmith nor Inspector Day needed to find him. He stalked them to a private residence and attempted to stab them. Nobody seems to know what his ultimate objective was.”

“Ultimate objective was being a nutter.”

“Be that as it may. The man who killed your friends is now dead. There is no investigation. There is no interest in the corpses you’ve kept preserved. And I might add that if you’d turned them over as you should have, maybe one or more of them would still be alive. I might have found some clue to his identity on their bodies. We could have caught him earlier.” Blackleg stared at him. The vein throbbed harder. Kingsley cleared his throat. “But I promised Nevil I wouldn’t delve into that particular line of accusation. I apologize, Mr Blackleg.”

“No. No, you’re right. I should’ve given ’em over. But folks down here don’t always get proper consideration.”

“I would have given them the same consideration I give everyone.”

“Maybe you would have at that.”

“It doesn’t matter now. Justice has been served.”

“I’d like to know why he done it. What’d he have against them ladies? What’d they do to him?”

“I doubt very much they did anything to him. It probably had nothing to do with them. At least, not specifically. Tell me, have you heard of Gilles de Rais?”

“Frenchman. Murdered little children, didn’t he?”

“Exactly right. He may have murdered scores of children, and for no greater reason than that killing them gave him satisfaction. That was centuries ago, Mr Blackleg. Creatures like that have no doubt prowled amongst us since the moment we dragged our primitive bodies from the surf. The likes of this Ridgway monster have always preyed on the innocent and the vulnerable. They pretend to be human beings, and they certainly look like us, but they take their pleasure from hurting others.”

“If that’s the only way to get pleasure, a man like that’d be better jumping off the nearest bridge soon’s he could walk there.”

“I think so, too. No one will grieve for Alan Ridgway.”

They sat for a moment. Kingsley puffed on his pipe. Blackleg reread the letter from Hammersmith. Both of them contemplated the human condition from opposite ends of the table. At last, Blackleg nodded and looked up at the doctor.

“Tell me what you plan to do with Little Betty and the others.”

“I have a private plot of land, Mr Blackleg. It is not a large property, by any means, but it was given to me, or rather to the hospital, to bury certain bodies we use in our studies. It is consecrated land and I would see your friends buried well.”

“You’d do that for me?”

“No. I would do that for Mr Hammersmith, and for my daughter, who brought this letter from him to me, and I would do that for the three women Alan Ridgway so cruelly used.”

“That’s good enough for me, then. Come. I’ll show you where they are.”

“Oh, I don’t need to see where they are. I’ll send people round to meet you and you can take them to the bodies. I’ll make the arrangements.”

“No policemen. If it’s rozzers you’re sending round, they won’t find me. I’ll be gone.”

“I won’t send the police. I’ll send my assistant with some students from my hospital. They’ll be discreet.”

“Send Hammersmith, too. I’d like to thank him myself.”

“I’ll tell him so when I see him next.”

Both men stood and shook hands. Kingsley sidestepped the surly barmaid and hurried back to the street. He tapped his pipe out on the side of the building, took a deep breath of damp air, and hailed a two-wheeler as it passed.

He fervently hoped Henry was already waiting for him at the office.

H
enry woke and opened his eyes. Then he reached up and felt his face to make sure his eyes really were open. He was surrounded by pitch-black nothing. He could smell metal and dirt, thick in his nostrils, and somewhere behind the grit he could smell water. He got his hands under him and pushed and stood up, unsteady as the room rocked around him. His left arm was asleep and pinpricks ran up and down from his shoulder to his wrist. He flexed his arm and twisted his wrist, waiting for the tingling sensation to pass.

“Hullo,” he said. His voice came back to him in tinny echoes, deeper than he thought his voice really was, and he knew he was alone. And he knew that the room was very small.

He did not remember coming to this place. He didn’t remember anything after closing the door to his little lamppost house and curling up to sleep. He had no idea how he might have come to be in yet another tiny room, but he knew he must be far away from Trafalgar Square.

When his head was clear and his arm felt normal again, he shuffled forward, his hands in front of him, patting the air to keep from running into a wall. He found a wall three steps away and turned to his right, felt along the wall until he came to a corner, and turned right again. Nothing impeded his progress; there was nothing to trip over. He encountered the next corner and turned right again. Almost immediately, he came upon a metal doorway with bars that ran across it from side to side. He tested the bars, pushed back and forth, but they didn’t budge. He felt for a knob or a key, and found a small flat plate joining the door to the wall beside it. He moved across and felt up and down, found the hinges holding the door. The whole thing seemed solid and locked and impassable. He moved on.

He went round and round the little cell without finding another way in or out.

“Hullo,” he said again.

When there was no answer, he sat down with his back against the wall opposite the barred door. He crossed his arms over his chest and put his head down and went back to sleep.

There was nothing else he could think to do until his captor revealed himself.

T
he police were combing the West End for the Harvest Man, but James Tiffany headed south instead, to 7 Great Scotland Yard and the stables of the Metropolitan Police. He chose a fine chestnut named Molly with a white blaze across her face and one blue eye, and the groom saddled her for him.

Tiffany mounted the horse and trotted her round the yard, getting a feel for the way she responded, then urged her forward past the ranks of police carriages and out onto Whitehall.

He had been an excellent rider in his youth, but it had been years since Tiffany had been on a horse. He and Molly took a few minutes to get used to each other. By the time they reached Trafalgar Square, Tiffany was riding easy, flexing his legs to counter the horse’s rhythms. He urged Molly clockwise around Regent Circus and out onto wide Oxford Street, passing pedestrians and wagons at a steady clip. He had to keep one hand on his hat to keep it from flying off, and as he passed an omnibus the passengers inside goggled at him, unused to seeing a horse and rider in city traffic. He kept his head down, but tipped his hat at them, feeling a bit like a cowboy in an American novel.

They passed Hyde Park and the horse was working up a fine sweat, clearly enjoying the opportunity to run hard. Tiffany turned his attention back to the investigation. Much as he hated to admit it, Inspector Day had hit on an important clue. Tiffany let go of the reins and patted the front of his waistcoat to make sure he still had the drawing of the Harvest Man in his pocket.

•   •   •

H
E
STOPPED
FIRST
AT
the latest murder scene, John Charles Pitt’s home, and implemented some of Kingsley’s new ideas about preserving the integrity of the place, but he didn’t stay long. He showed Fiona’s sketch of the murderer to Constable Bentley before jumping back on the horse and galloping away. He had a lot of ground to cover.

Sergeant Kett was coordinating the manhunt from the Yard and had posted policemen strategically throughout the neighborhood. It took some time for Tiffany to make contact with them all. The route, which would have taken him the entire day on foot or even in a carriage, now sped by him, a blur of houses and trees, of children playing on footpaths and chasing each other across gardens. Tiffany stopped and talked to every man he saw along the way, but he stayed up on the horse while he did so. He leaned down again and again to show the illustration of the killer and he hoped they would recognize the man’s features if they saw him on the street.

The Harvest Man had been flushed and Tiffany was determined to run him to ground before he could find a new place to hide, before night fell and some ill-fated couple went to bed for the last time.

Constable John Jones was patrolling Monmouth Road, going from door to door, checking window locks and exploring attics, when Tiffany caught up to him and gave him the sketch to look at.

Jones’s mouth fell open and he stared up at the inspector. “I saw him,” Jones said. “I mean, I
just
saw him, not five minutes ago.”

“Where?”

“Here. Right here on Monmouth. He’s odd-looking, has a funny ear, but he wasn’t acting suspicious. Walked like he had something to do, in a hurry, not like he was looking at the houses, you know?”

“But which way did he go?”

Jones pointed south and Tiffany turned the horse around, used his heels to nudge her sides. He was excited. They had him. Molly whinnied and bolted down the street and Tiffany’s hat finally left his head, sailing away behind them and fetching up against the curb.

Leinster Square loomed ahead, with its tall iron fences, dense growth sucking every bit of sunlight from the street. Tiffany rode along the outside of the fence until he reached a gate that led to a wide path through the square. He slowed Molly down and took her into the trees at a canter. He watched both sides of the path, turning left and right in the saddle, hoping to spot movement or a shadow that didn’t belong.

He rode out at the opposite end and shook his head. Nothing. He dismounted and examined the soft earth at the edge of the path. There was a single boot print, but it was impossible to tell exactly how long it had been there. He stood, keeping hold of Molly’s reins, and scanned the cobblestones. Ahead of him was Princes Square, smaller than Leinster, but a man could easily lose pursuit there, cutting across to any street beyond. To his right and farther away was Pembridge Square, and beyond it Ladbroke. To his left was Kensington Gardens Square. The Harvest Man could have gone in any direction, cut through vegetation anywhere and doubled back, leaving no trail to follow. Or he might even still be somewhere behind Tiffany, hiding in the thick greenery of Leinster.

Constable Jones came up behind him, breathing hard. He handed Tiffany his hat.

“You’re sure it was him?”

Jones held up a finger and caught his breath before speaking. “Sure of it. Matches that picture you showed me. Only difference is that ear of his.”

“You said it was odd?”

“Twisted like,” Jones said. “Burned or torn, maybe, but a long time ago.”

“That ought to help us pick him out of a crowd.”

“No question of it.”

“Well, we’ve lost him for now. Or he’s lost us. Still, he’s nearby. He can’t be far.”

Jones looked over the landscape, clearly reaching the same hopeless conclusions Tiffany had. “He might be anywhere, sir.”

“He’s close by. And we know what he looks like now. He can’t travel easily, so he’s got to take cover. Jones, I want everyone pulled in and stationed at every corner throughout this area.”

“That’ll take some time.”

“Take the horse.” Tiffany handed the reins to Jones. “Round everyone up and pull them into a tighter perimeter. And send a runner to Kett at the Yard. Get more men.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to protect our witness. Once we catch this bastard, we’re gonna need her to identify him. For all we know, he might still be after her.”

“Aye, sir.”

Jones launched himself up and got a leg over the horse’s back. Molly snorted and pawed the ground. Jones dug in his heels and they galloped away. Tiffany turned and entered the square. He walked slowly, watching the trees and underbrush, hoping for a glimpse of the killer. He balled his hands into fists. He’d almost caught him. He knew it. There wasn’t much daylight left, but he’d be damned if another day dawned with the Harvest Man still at large.

He shouted at the tops of the trees as he walked. “Can you hear me? I’m going to find you. This is the last time you’ll ever see the sun!”