The Hellfire Conspiracy (7 page)

“Some find the institution of marriage to be a form of tyranny not unlike slavery. Most of us at the Charity Organization Society feel that way. We do not need a man to become whole individuals. We are scholars and freethinkers, Mr. Llewelyn. We refuse to be put on a pedestal but instead hope to help bring about social change.”

“Mrs. DeVere and Mrs. Carrick are both married,” I pointed out.

“True. It is a hard choice. We lose a lot of sisters to marriage. I’ve turned down several offers myself. It is a difficult decision to remain celibate.”

I tried hard not to blush, but I’d never heard a young woman speak so frankly.

“So are there many young women like you in the East End just now?”

“Oh, yes, dozens. Social work is a respectable use of time for young, unmarried women these days. But enough about me. Do you like being a detective?”

“Mr. Barker prefers the term ‘enquiry agent.’”

“What is the difference?”

“We take the moral high ground, so to speak. A detective is willing to break the law in order to solve whatever case he is working on. He may break into a house to obtain information.”

“So you’ve never broken a law to obtain information?” Miss Potter asked.

“Well, we’ve bent it a little once or twice.”

“And are you not a former criminal?”

“I was, in a way, but it was complicated.”

“Your distinctions have quite gone out the window, then, sir.”

“Allow me to return the compliment, Miss Potter. You are good.”

“You haven’t answered my question, Mr. Llewelyn,” she pursued. “Do you like being a detective?”

“No, no. You cannot put me off that easily, Miss Potter. You followed me here for a purpose. What was it, may I ask?”

“I thought I might help you,” she said, looking down at a handkerchief she was kneading in her hands. “I could volunteer at the C.O.S. again. Miss Hill would be glad to take me back. Perhaps I might overhear something said by one of the patrons that would lead you to Gwendolyn and her abductors.”

I wanted to tell her that we were no longer looking for a white slave ring but instead a madman. However, it was not my secret to reveal.

“What do you think?” she pressed.

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” I retorted. “It is what my employer thinks that is important. I don’t know what he shall say. He keeps a bachelor’s home and offices, I should warn you. Why do you wish to help, anyway?”

“Aren’t white slave rings a social problem, sir?”

“They are,” I admitted.

“You do wish Gwendolyn to be saved and these criminals caught?”

“Of course.”

“Then I suppose it is female detectives you don’t like.”

She argued well, I gave her that, but then, most women do.

“You’re building a straw man,” I reasoned. “I have neither criticized female detectives, denied wanting Miss DeVere to be found, nor claimed that white slavery was not a social problem. I merely wondered about your personal motives.”

“You’re protective of your employer.”

“I’m not sure he needs protection, but he doesn’t need to be interrupted in his work.”

“Very well,” she said. “I do have personal reasons. I want to be able to say, if only for my own sake, that I have worked for a professional investigator. It makes me feel I too am a professional and not a rich girl playing games. Tell your Mr. Barker I expect to be paid.”

“Do not consider yourself hired just yet, but I shall speak to him tonight. Will you be at the Katherine Building tomorrow?”

“Of course not,” she replied. “It’s Sunday.”

“Then I shall send word of my employer’s decision,” I said, rising from the bench. “I bid you good afternoon, Miss Potter.” I raised my hat to her and left the park. The Guv would be waiting for me, and also, I thought it best to be the one to end the conversation. It was the only control I had.

As I hurried out of the park, my mind gathered impressions. Beatrice Potter was a beautiful and intelligent young woman and seemed genuinely committed to bringing about reform in the East End. I did not think, however, that the girl was being truthful about her motives for wishing to join us in the hunt for Gwendolyn DeVere.

“H
ERE THEY ARE, SIR,” I SAID, LAYING THE
newly typed pages on my employer’s desk. Barker took the sheets in his hand and began to read. The tale went as follows:

Barker put down my notes and leaned back in his chair in thought.

“What do you make of it, sir?” I dared ask.

“I’m not certain,” he said. “I have no frame of reference. I have never read a fairy story before.”

“Never? Not even when you were a child?”

“No. I was raised in a strict Calvinist home and all we read were the Bible and our clan histories. Reading tales of ogres and such would have been considered desperately wicked. What do you gather from it?”

“It is a variation on the classic giant story,” I said. “A child is caught by a slow-witted giant and through an act of cleverness escapes. It is also a morality tale. Be good and do not wander off or else the bogeyman shall get you. The difference is that the tale takes place in the center of London instead of a castle or at the top of a beanstalk.”

“The tale is rather gruesome,” Barker said. “Boy meat and hacking off limbs.”

“Yes, but that’s the thrill of it. When a child first hears it, it is harrowing. After that, it is humorous—the slow-witted man and his wife tricked twice by a child.”

“Do you think there might have been a Mr. Miacca around whom the legend grew?”

“It is possible. Parents would be sure to point out someone they wished their children to avoid, particularly if he was a foreigner. As you said earlier, the name sounds Jewish or Mediterranean. There’s no telling how old the legend is. It could be centuries old.”

“You’ve made a very good analysis, Thomas. I knew I was not mistaken in hiring a scholar. Is there anything else?”

“Well, sir, there is one other legend about cannibalism in Old London.”

Barker nodded. “Sweeney Todd.”

“Exactly. He’s in the book as well, but he’s under legends rather than fairy tales. I thought I’d call it to your attention.”

“And so you have.” He picked up the verses I’d copied from Lear, and began turning the pages. I watched his brows slowly sink behind his round spectacles.

“Poems,” he grunted. “Limericks. I have heard many a limerick in my time, mostly from sailors. They were generally ribald. These are not, but I do not understand the humor. What is humorous about a man who has birds nesting in his beard? It does not look like Miacca’s note.”

“His longer poems do, sir. Look past the limericks.”

He flipped impatiently through the pages. Finally, he tossed it onto his blotter with more vehemence than he normally gave the printed word and made his pronouncement. “Rubbish. The similarities are superficial. Anyone with a grasp of English could have written the poem. As for this fellow, I cannot understand Lear’s appeal, save to the smallest of tots. Do you have anything else?”

“Well, sir, there is one thing. I was followed from the British Museum.”

Barker leaned back in his seat and pressed his fingertips together. He looked rather like a schoolmaster when he did that. “Continue.”

I told him about Miss Potter and our conversation. I left out any attempts at flirtation on my part, but I knew he was smart enough to imagine it back in again. Here it comes, I thought, the lecture:
This agency does not exist to provide you with female companionship, etc.

“She offered to keep an eye on the Charity Organization Society,” he stated.

“Yes, sir.”

“We may take her up on the offer.”

That was all. No lecture.

“Socialists,” he growled.

“You do not approve of socialism? If it makes any difference, I believe the term Miss Hill used was ‘Christian socialist.’”

“Christian socialist,” Barker muttered. “That is even worse.”

“What is the difference, pray, in the good works you do in the Tabernacle and the work of the Christian socialist?”

“It starts with their entire worldview, lad. They believe that man is basically good, and that, given the proper nudge by such crusading women, they can turn the earth into a utopia and usher in the millennium.”

“And you believe—”

“That man, from the time he is born is at heart selfish and any attempt at utopia shall fail miserably. Heaven shall not be attained on earth.”

“But they are helping, sir, are they not? Isn’t Brother McClain over in Mile End Road helping?”

“He is, but he is no socialist. His beliefs are above reproach.”

I wanted to say that that meant they were in line with his. McClain was Barker’s sparring partner and friend. A former heavyweight champion, he now ran a mission in the East End that was known to have some success with alcohol and opium addicts.

“But they do no harm, at least. The people are fed and cared for.”

“I’ll grant you that, lad. Miss Hill has the command of a field marshal.” My employer took a meerschaum from his smoking cabinet and lit a vesta. “But back to Miacca. He’s a depraved monster.”

“You think he is a monster, then.”

“He is an aberration. He has abdicated all rights to be considered human. He should be hunted down like a mad dog and shot. I have feared something like this would happen. Society continues to grow more and more depraved.”

There was a cold supper awaiting us when we arrived home. Mac had set out potted beef and slices of ham on the table, with a thick wedge of cheddar and a loaf of bread. He had brought up one of his small casks of homemade stout from the cellar. It was all perfectly acceptable food, but it was public house fare. After a hard day, I expected one of Etienne’s feasts, quails stuffed with
pâté de foie gras
or salmon in aspic.

“What’s going on here?” I asked Mac, pointing at the table.

Jacob Maccabee had been making a show of it, acting as if this were simply another night. He wilted under my questioning.

“Mr. Dummolard has quit.”

“Quit!”

“Yes, sir. If I recall it correctly, he said henceforth he shall feed the rats of the city, who have a finer appreciation of cuisine than you two…er, gentlemen. He left something for you there.”

Mac pointed to my plate. There was a spongy looking mass there, yellow speckled with black.

“An omelet?” I asked, looking at it dubiously.

“Yes, sir. It is the very one he made for you this morning, the one you left behind. Mr. Dummolard took it very hard, I’m afraid. He brought in the truffle specially. In fact, he made a great show of apologizing to it that it gave its life for such an undeserving wastrel. That’s close to what he said. My French isn’t good, and he was shouting most of it.”

I was appalled, of course, but my employer merely sat down and began to help himself to the potted meat. Barker’s ward had come into the garden while Dummolard was preparing the omelet that morning, but I daren’t bring it up to him now. I wasn’t about to get involved in an argument between my employer and his cook. “Oh, do take this away, Mac. It’s disgusting.”

“Etienne was long overdue for a blowup,” Barker said. “In fact, it was your fondness for his cooking that has kept him mollified all this time. He shall return eventually and act as if nothing happened.”

“I could go to his restaurant to apologize,” I offered.

“It would only make matters worse. He must explode every now and then. You merely gave him an excuse.”

Mac cleared his throat discreetly. “Mr. Dummolard was also put out by the cavalier manner in which you consumed the rashers and eggs he made this morning, sir.”

“Confound it,” Barker exclaimed. “I’m not going to be dictated to by my cook. I didn’t as captain of the
Osprey
and I don’t intend to now. Sit down and eat, Thomas. There’ll be no fancy Parisian cooking for you tonight.”

We ate in silence with only the clinking of cutlery on china for company. In the middle of the meal, Barker evinced a hope that Harm was “getting on” up in Yorkshire. I took it for a rhetorical question and did not answer. Then a question occurred to me and I broke the silence again.

“Shall you tell the DeVeres about Mr. Miacca?”

Barker finished worrying a piece of ham and spoke. “There’s no point. I have no real proof of a connection between Miss DeVere and Miacca, only a suspicion. There are still white slavers in England and one may have her for all I know.”

He took up his tankard of stout and drained it. Then he pushed himself up out of his chair.

“I had been preparing for a case of child slavery. Now I must prepare to hunt for an archfiend. Mac, I shall need a pot of tea in my room. Thomas, I leave you to your own devices.”

He was almost out of the room when he stopped and turned to me. “Perhaps Etienne’s absence can be used to our advantage,” he said.

Whatever that meant, I didn’t like the sound of it.