The Lamplighter (22 page)

Groves nodded. “Has she ever said any unusual things to you?”

“No more than any other person.”

“She has never lost her temper?”

“No.” Stark coughed. “Why would she do that?”

“And what of her activities beyond this store?”

“I know Miss Todd only professionally.”

“She has never given you any indication of her interests?”

“I don't believe there is much to ask about, Inspector.”

“And you have no reason to suspect that anything has changed in recent days? She shows no sign of being nervous?”

“I would think it unnatural if she were not somehow affected by recent events. We all have been. May I ask what this is about, Inspector?”

But at this stage the printing press stopped and Groves, on the verge of responding, paused to listen awhile, clearly unnerved. But there was no sign of anyone from the stairs, and eventually he drew back and changed the subject.

“The press you have down there.” He raised his voice in a more businesslike manner. “Fast, is it?”

“The Koenig? It can handle a thousand impressions an hour.”

“Prints books, I suppose?”

“It's only good for news sheets and pamphlets, I'm afraid. I have a Columbian for better-quality work, but that is appreciably slower.” Stark frowned. “May I ask why you make such an inquiry, Inspector? Have you something you'd like to see in print?”

But Groves looked suddenly caught out. “Aye,” he said ambiguously, and planted his hat on his head. “Well…good day to you, then, Mr. Stark. Your cooperation is welcome as always.”

“Good day to you, Inspector.”

On his way out, watched by the book dealer, Groves stopped to resume his perfunctory browsing, tugging his lip as though trying to ascertain if there were any other titles of interest, shaking his head to register some sort of disapproval, and finally turning and striding swiftly out the door.

In his wake, satisfied that he was alone and the Inspector was not about to return, Stark stood trying to fathom the reason for the visit and what on earth the investigation might have to do with his assistant. It was true, he had to admit, that Evelyn was a mysterious one—a bottle tightly stoppered—and capable of flashes of ill temper if prodded about her past, but at the same time he could not conceive of her becoming embroiled in any sort of sinister activity. He was the one in Edinburgh who knew her best, and he had seen too much pleasure in her face at the sight of a mere pigeon waddling in the street, or a passing tram horse, to believe her capable of genuine malice.

On his way down the narrow stairway, however, he was surprised to discern some sobbing and was further alarmed, emerging into the gloomy cellar, to discover some of the printed pamphlets scattered across the floor. Evelyn, near the rear of the press, was buckled over in tears.

“Whatever is the matter?” he asked, concerned.

Evelyn looked up at him, misty-eyed. “I am the very devil, aren't I?”

Stark frowned. “I don't understand,” he said, fearing she might have overheard the conversation above.

“I was not concentrating,” she said, gesturing to the printing press. “I should have been watching…but I was distracted!”

Stark looked at the press—a personally modified steam-operated monster with brass cylinders and hissing pistons—and went over to the loading tray to investigate. Examining the paper feeder he saw that one of the foolscap sheets had jammed in the uppermost frisket.

“It's all right,” he told her.

“I was remiss,” she said.

“No, it's all right.”

“I was remiss,” she insisted. “If there is damage I want you to deduct it from my pay!”

“There's nothing to worry about, Evelyn. This is hardly damage at all—it's easily fixed.”

“You say that to be kind!”

“No, Evelyn, please don't punish yourself.” He dislodged the jammed paper and held it up. “There? You see?”

“But the damage—”

“It's nothing. Evelyn. I'll have it repaired in no time.”

“I'll pay for it!”

“You'll do no such thing,” he said firmly, wiping his fingers, and briefly considered some manner of jocular comment, of the type he frequently employed to lighten her spirits. But glancing at her now he thought she looked unusually ghostly and thin, even by her standards, and his brow creased.

“Are you…are you feeling unwell?” he asked delicately.

She immediately diverted his attention to a page, still wet with ink, that she held in her gloved hand. “It's one of the pamphlets on the nervous system,” she explained tearfully. “One that I had just printed. I got to reading it as I was feeding some sheets in, and I lost concentration. The words, they…”

“They disturbed you?” Stark knew it took little to upset her.

Evelyn nodded. “It compares the brain to an electrical circuit…and it says that when too much energy is generated—when there is too much thought—there can be an overload.”

“It's merely an analogy,” Stark told her.

“But do you think it might be true?” she asked, strangely earnest. “As others have also implied? That…that dreams can materialize in force? That anger has a physical energy?”

“Who suggested this?” Stark asked, figuring it was most likely someone in one of the lectures she attended.

“It was a…a professor. I overheard him.”

“Professor McKnight?” he asked. It was to this professor that she had lately attributed some of her most interesting theories. She had become obsessed with the man and sometimes even mistakenly addressed Stark himself by the name.

She nodded sheepishly.

“Is that what worries you?”

She nodded again.

He considered a moment, thinking that this Professor McKnight, whoever he was, had filled her mind with many troubling notions and should be ashamed of himself. “Have you been unsettled by all the bloodshed?” he asked quietly. “Does it worry you?”

She wiped a tear from her cheek. “I fear,” she said, “that I have a terrible hell inside me.”

She spoke as though to imply that she was partly responsible for the atrocities. But looking at her now, frail and vulnerable, like an ill-treated dog or a cowering kitten, Stark saw only a history of suffering as plain as the pages of any book. And suddenly feeling an overpowering affection such as he usually experienced only for wounded animals, he stepped forward, extended a finger, and tickled her gently under the chin.

“Dear little creature…” he murmured.

Her lower lip quivered in a strangely bestial manner and finally settled.

T
HE PRONOUNCED SENSITIVITY
of Groves's smell (“The Perfumed Letter”), his touch (“The Walls of Braille”), and his sight (“The Cricket's Footprints”) had in frequent instances been the difference between arrest and the evasion of justice. But of all his senses it was his hearing that was most celebrated in his diaries and memoirs, and before bed each night he duly cleaned and polished his ears like a soldier's rifles. He could hear a sparrow alighting on eaves, he claimed, or the stifled panting of a thief behind a hastily sealed door, or even—as now—the rubber-soled boot slap of a fellow officer pounding through the nocturnal streets to fetch him in an emergency.

He did not even bother to wake up. He pushed himself deliriously out of bed, performed his ablutions in a daze, dressed mechanically, drained a glass of cold tea, and by the time Pringle arrived he was already brushed, combed, freshly soaped, and ready for action.

“What is it?” he asked, opening the door before his assistant was able to apply a frantic knock.

Pringle looked astonished, no doubt by the Inspector's uncanny prescience. “It's…it's the Todd woman,” he said, catching his breath.

Groves frowned. “What of her?”

“I think,” Pringle said, still with some difficulty, “that it's best you find out for yourself, sir.”

Groves grunted, vaguely irritated by the dramatics but relieved to have the chance to assess the new development free from distortion. He locked the door behind him quietly, mindful of not waking his sisters, and took a bracing look at the fading stars. “Let's be on our way, then,” he said, careful to betray not a hint of emotion, and with great energy he took off up Leith Walk with Pringle fighting to keep pace beside him, drawn by some overpowering instinct to Candlemaker Row.

Thoughts of the insidious Evelyn Todd had barely had a chance to leave his mind from the previous day. It had begun as early as his arrival at Central Office, with a telegram from the Head Constable of the Monaghan police:

Groves was just coming to terms with this when a constable entered with a report, gleaned from a meticulous examination of police records, of her further criminal activity. Two years previously, when she was residing in a lodging house in Bell's Wynd, she had been arrested for releasing the parrots of the caged-bird seller in St. Giles Street. According to her own testimony she had been strolling through the area on a Saturday afternoon when, spying the rows of cramped and listless birds, she had been overcome with the urge to free them from captivity. She could not properly recall what had happened next, but the bird seller—a hunchbacked crone of sixty, a fixture of the area—claimed the young woman had methodically unlatched every single door and shaken each cage in “an animal frenzy” and “could not be beaten off for the love of God,” until all her prize birds—“parrots of the rainbow's spectrum”—had been dispersed into the smoky skies.

Tried before the Police Court, Evelyn had presented a picture of genuine remorse, fully accountable for her indiscretion and willing and eager to compensate the victim. It was noted that her act of avian emancipation had accomplished little, in any event, as for days afterward the frozen cobbles had been littered with parrots and the city's cats had returned home with colored bundles. The notoriously lenient Bailie Ryan, taking into account Evelyn's disposition and circumstances and observing that she had not been motivated by notions of personal gain, had ordered her to pay two pounds in damages to the bird seller and a five-shilling caution for future conduct or suffer five days' imprisonment. Evelyn herself had then claimed she would voluntarily contribute another five shillings to the St. Mary's poor box, further appealing to the Bailie.

Tracking down the arresting constable, Groves was unsurprised to learn that Arthur Stark had been in the public gallery that day and afterward was seen introducing himself to Evelyn, her criminal act thus leading directly to her employment in the bookstore.

Baffled by her contradictions, in any case, Groves decided he could no longer avoid a visit to Dr. Stellmach, the Wax Man's source on criminal behavior, to take at least a token academic reading of her mental state. Arriving at noon at the doctor's cluttered terrace house on Regent Road, he found his host a most curious little figure, beetle-browed, poorly shaved, and gifted with a startling Beethoven-like coiffure that Groves, for all his fatigue and confusion, could not help staring at enviously. The two men sat in a parlor sprayed with the spidery shadows of thick lace curtains.

“This lady you speak of,” Stellmach asked, “would you know the background?”

Groves tore his gaze from the man's hairline. “She is an orphan. Her mother was a prostitute.”

“A prostitute.” Stellmach clicked his tongue meaningfully. “What became of her?”

“The mother? She died of cholera.”

“The father?”

“He's…” Groves thought the better of mentioning his suspicions, “…unknown.”

Stellmach nodded somberly. “There exists a degenerative streak in those born to the prostitutes. A taint of the nerves.”

“Aye,” Groves agreed, pleased with the word
taint
.

“The taint, it works through the system like an infection. The daughter you speak of, is she a prostitute herself?”

“Not that I am aware of.”

“Is she celibate?”

“That,” Groves said uncomfortably, “is not for me to say.”

“Does she have the aspects of a maiden?”

“Her aspects are…contrary. She was a nun at one stage.”

There was an upstairs noise at this point—a woman in heels—and Stellmach rose to ease the door shut before returning to his seat, where he coughed and went on, in a strangely furtive tone. “A nun, you say? Does she have any particular friends?”

“Particular?”

“The nuns, they are known to have what are called ‘particular friends.'”

Groves was not sure what he meant, but noted that the man spoke with some relish. “She is no longer a nun,” he said.

“You are sure she has no particular friends?”

“I…I am aware of no friends.”

Stellmach looked disappointed. “Is she pale?”

“Very much so.”

“Tired-looking? Dark circles under the eyes?”

“Aye.”

“And she wears the tight clothes, heavily laced?”

Groves had always imagined they were tight, and he nodded vaguely.

“Does she have obstructed menses?”

“Good Lord, man,” Groves said, trying to imagine himself asking such a question, “what does that have to do with it?”

But at this Stellmach sighed wearily, well acquainted with such skepticism. “It is all part of the modern malady,” he explained, leaning back and fingering his suspenders, “which I have written about in great detail. The woman raised on cheap romances and lurid gossip. The heavy drinking of coffee, sugar, and spiced breads. The constricting clothes. The unhealthy contrast of heat and cold in the northern cities. The breathing of foul air and dust. This is the combination which brings about the disequilibrium of the nervous system. With the imbalance comes the upsets of the gastrointestinal tract, the disrupted menses, the volatile disposition, the frailty, the distemper. This is the foundation of the woman's mental instability, combined in many cases with the degenerative taint and the inherited moral degeneracy.” His eyes flared. “May I proceed with my questions?”

Groves could not but admit that the doctor had spoken with some authority. It was strangely exciting, in fact, to have Evelyn stripped of her enamel coating and her malfunctioning clockwork innards exposed. “Aye,” he said. “Go on.”

Stellmach stroked his chin. “Does the lady show symptoms of seizure? Grand movements?”

“She is flighty at times.”

“But no convulsions? Blackouts? Hallucinations?”

“Not while I have been present.”

“Where does she work, if she has no husband?”

“She works for a bookseller.”

“And before this?”

“She washed dishes. She was a match dipper.”

“A match dipper?” Stellmach tilted his head suggestively.

“Aye. Is this important?”

“Match dippers breathe the fumes of the phosphor and suffer hallucinations, Inspector. The lady, does she have any medical conditions? Does she take laudanum? Morphine?”

“Not that I'm aware…”

“Does she visit a doctor?”

“I've not asked.”

Stellmach looked displeased. “These are things you will need to establish, Inspector. It is not easy to reach the accurate conclusions without all the proper information.”

But Groves disliked the implication that he had been less than thorough in his investigation. “In case you don't know,” he said testily, “the Lord Provost himself has declared this a case unlike any ever seen in this city. I personally have been occupied with all manner of leads and I am here only because it is my duty to investigate every possibility. You came highly recommended to me.”

“By Chief Inspector Smith?” Stellmach asked with obvious affection, to the further irritation of Groves.

“By him, aye,” Groves said, and inhaled. “Listen, man—can I rely on you to hold a secret?”

“It is an oath of the profession.”

“It is my suspicion,” the Inspector stated, “that the lady I speak of is not just tainted, and not just unstable, but capable of the most ferocious strength, the most violent acts, and that is what I am here to discover.”

Stellmach considered. “You say she is generally delicate, that is so?”

“Most often she gives that appearance, as I have already said.”

There was a further indication of movement above, and in response Stellmach leaned forward in his chair. “This can be deceptive, Inspector,” he whispered, as though terrified that an incriminating word might escape the room. “A mask, you see. The fairer sex, they have mastered the stealth of hiding strength. The woman, she throws around her the veils of delicacy and virtue, when in fact she is the incarnate predator. She fans herself in the heat and she will not step over a puddle in the wet, but she has a tolerance for discomfort that far exceeds the man. She puts on the air of innocence when in fact her mind churns constantly with schemes. But the powers she harnesses she does not apply to noble pursuits. The energy the man feeds into creativity and manufacture, the woman channels into discord and destruction. She is the great deceiver.”

Chilled, Groves wondered if Stellmach had chosen the last words knowingly.

“But this is something that the woman herself, sometimes she is not aware,” the doctor went on. “This is the performance that the society has her play and which she struggles to maintain night after night, and she tries to nail down her instincts, she deprives herself of her illicit nature, and she becomes agitated and unruly. In many cases there is no telling of what the woman in the state of hysteria is capable. Have you ever visited an asylum, Inspector?”

“I have been to a madhouse.”

“Then you will know that the madwoman, she claws and fights like the cornered beast, like no man is capable, and the doctor who attends to her puts his life in danger.”

Here Stellmach unbuttoned his sleeve—rapidly, as though fearing he might be caught—and exposed a remarkably hairy forearm, decorated with livid tooth marks. “I was an intern, Inspector, and stronger in those days than I am now…but the woman, she was like a wolf, and she could not be fought off.”

Groves recalled the words of the priest—that the monsignor had been torn apart “as if by wolves”—and those of the caged-bird seller—that Evelyn “could not be beaten off”—and he felt strangely queasy. He watched Stellmach refasten his cuff.