The Lazarus Gate (10 page)

‘As you said yourself, old chap,’ said Ambrose, encouragingly, ‘no unwanted attention. And that coat should certainly do the trick.’

Ambrose was apparently never without some degree of finery, and looked dapper as always in his grey fitted suit, silk cravat, top hat and fine ebony cane—an item which I now knew was also a deadly weapon. I made a poor-looking companion for him, I’m sure, with my black eye, bruises and limp, but he kept any further quips to himself.

‘This bloody rain is quite intolerable,’ said Ambrose, gazing forlornly from the carriage window. ‘If it doesn’t stop soon I think the Thames might burst its banks.’ I glanced up at the pale grey sky, hoping for better fortune today than the weather portended.

* * *

At Marble Arch, we found it difficult to inspect the scene of the earlier crime due to the great number of people milling about. Situated as it was at a busy exchange between Oxford Street, Edgware Road and Hyde Park it seemed that every type of street-seller, foreign tourist, pickpocket, cab driver and house servant was going about his or her business at once. The people of London were unperturbed by a bit of drizzle. Street entertainers attracted large crowds, ruddy-faced children raced around like wild creatures, costermongers and newspapermen were lending their voices to a deafening throng, whilst courting couples and their chaperones tried to avoid the commotion to take their strolls through the gardens, harassed every step of the way by flower girls and portrait painters. The press of beggars and street-sellers was such that Ambrose was obliged to find a policeman to help move some of them away from the inner arch itself, using some bogus credentials and garrulous nature to convince the constable to place himself at our service. I ignored Hanlocke’s duplicity, assuming it was all in the name of secrecy for our agency. Even then, as I examined the smooth white surface of the arch, we could do nothing to stop folk gawping at us as we searched for clues. Ambrose pulled a small magnifier from his jacket pocket, and handed it to me to assist in my scrutiny, before proceeding to watch me as interestedly as the common crowd.

‘They searched the interior rooms at the time, I assume?’ I asked Ambrose.

‘Of course. Special Branch were there. They may be heavy handed, but they’re nothing if not thorough. There were no anarchists hiding upstairs.’

‘And the gates were closed?’

‘Of course.’

I looked up at the formidable bronze gates. They were not impossible to climb, though it would certainly be arduous, and there was nowhere to go beyond them but to an empty courtyard.

‘I am afraid the search may be fruitless. Too many people have walked through here since the anarchists escaped, and the walls appear spotless,’ I said, resignedly.

‘Should think so too,’ said Ambrose. ‘National treasure, this. I expect it’s been washed down a fair few times since then—mind you, they’ve made a poor fist of it. Look at that mildew around the base there. Needs a good scrub if you ask me—I should inform the Department of Works.’

Something in Ambrose’s tone told me that he would do no such thing. But his remark did cause me to look more closely at the mildewed area, and that is when I made a small discovery.

‘Good Lord, Ambrose, I think you’re onto something.’

‘Eh? Found some incriminating moss, have you?

‘You scoff, but perhaps I have.’ I drew Ambrose closer, and he knelt on the flagstones with a look of distaste before examining my find. ‘See here—there’s a discernible line in the mildew, no more than a quarter of an inch wide. And look, see, it occurs on the opposite side too.’

The yellow-green mildew ran just a few inches up the inside of the arch from the pavement, where it must have escaped the brushes of the street cleaners. At roughly the centre point of the thick inner wall, on either side of the arch, there was a narrow, clean line where the mildew no longer grew. Either side of that line, the growth was pale and yellow for several inches, as though it was dead. It was certainly curious, if not exactly earth-shattering, and Ambrose dismissed the discovery out of hand. However, using the magnifier I followed the mark up the wall, and did my best to trace its path upwards towards the ceiling of the arch, whereupon it soon became too indistinct to see. I squinted at the apex, feeling certain that I could trace the faintest line all the way around the arch’s interior curve. To me it looked as though a huge board or pane of glass had once stood in the exact centre of the archway, sitting flush with its smooth marble walls. Ambrose was at a loss.

‘I very much doubt this has anything to do with the case,’ he said. ‘I expected you’d be searching for manhole covers or… well,
something
else.’

‘That’s already been done, Ambrose,’ I replied, patiently. ‘We have sworn statements from reliable witnesses, not least a police sergeant, that the area was secure and that the anarchists escaped by unknown means. I am simply exploring every possible avenue.’

‘Very well. And what conclusions have you drawn?’

I rapped firmly on the wall of the arch near the marks, and, finding it solid and ignoring Ambrose’s suppressed snicker, I got to my feet and looked around at the throng of people going about their business. Those who had stopped to watch us had by now grown bored and wandered off.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I think we should go back to the club and review the case notes, bearing in mind this information. But first, I need to visit one of those booksellers.’

I marched through the crowds, to where I had earlier seen a bookseller with his cart. Ambrose thanked the policeman for his time and followed me. The trader was a middle-aged man with more wrinkles than he had a right to. He instantly went into his sales patter, trying to sell me volumes on everything from French law to river angling, in a cockney drawl that made me doubt he could actually read any more than the titles of his many volumes.

‘None of that, my good man. I’m looking for a map of London. A good Ordnance Survey if you have one.’

With only a minor grumble that the sale would be a small one, the bookseller rifled through his cart, with grubby, dextrous fingers that protruded from fingerless woollen gloves. Before long he produced a whole pile of maps, bound together with string, and handed me the one I sought at a cost of threepence.

‘We have one of those at the club, if you recall,’ said Ambrose.

‘Yes. But I intend to deface this one,’ I said cheerfully. ‘Now come along, we have detective work to attend to.’

‘What on earth has come over you?’ Ambrose quizzed me as I limped off briskly to cross the road. ‘Last night you were all good manners and deference. Now you’re like a dog with a bone.’

‘Last night,’ I said, not slowing my pace as I crossed the street, ‘I was at first a fish out of water, then confounded by mysteries, and finally a victim. Today, I am a captain again, and an agent of the Crown, and I intend to carry out my assignment dutifully.’

My companion did not reply, though I am certain he would have been shaking his head in amusement had I turned to look at him. I spoke the truth, but of course there were other, more personal reasons for my change of approach. I could not stop now; to do so would be to invite dark moods and temptation, and probably to wake each evening in some East End opium den rather than my comfortable Bloomsbury bed. Instead, I knew I had to embrace the new-found sense of purpose and heavy motivation that spurred me onwards. Together, Ambrose and I made down Oxford Street to hail another cab, this time headed for Pall Mall and the Apollonian Club.

* * *

The club was busier that afternoon than it had been the previous evening. A few clubmen were finishing afternoon tea in the dining room, whilst a large party of visitors were receiving a tour by one of the members. My appearance courted a few sideways glances, but I shrugged them off and allowed Ambrose to lead the way once more to the private office. We were intercepted en route by a formally dressed servant, whom Ambrose addressed as Hollins, and who handed me a letter bearing the seal of Apollo. ‘From Sir Toby, sir,’ was all Hollins said by way of explanation, before he went about his business. I saved the letter until we were safely inside the office and had turned up the lamps.

Cpt. Hardwick
,

It seems that in one evening you have made more progress in our investigation than half a dozen men have made in several weeks. I have passed on your findings to my best clerks. I trust you will find the fruits of their labour with the case files by the time you return to the club.

Keep up the good work.

Yours, &c.,
Sir Toby Fitzwilliam, Bart.

I was somewhat surprised by the praise contained in that short note. Ambrose raised an eyebrow when he read it.

‘I always said that Sir Toby was incapable of human kindness,’ he quipped. ‘If he keeps this up I may have to find new ways to be disrespectful.’

Ignoring him, I spread out the case files on the desk, under the light of the lamps. As intimated in Sir Toby’s note, there was a new notebook amongst them, a reporter’s pocketbook, which as far as I could tell contained a near-complete deciphering of the coded notebook in a neat hand, along with a few scribbled pencil-notes in the margins. I had no idea who the clerks were, where they were situated, or what hours they kept, but I was startled at the speed and thoroughness with which they had carried out the task. The majority of the entries in the pocketbook represented names and addresses, page after page of them. The margin notes indicated that a goodly proportion of those named were spiritualists, illusionists and so-called fortune-tellers, most of whom were already known to the club. More than a dozen of them were denoted as ‘deceased’; three as ‘known criminals’ and a further three of ‘unknown whereabouts’. The names meant nothing to me, although the vast majority of the addresses were in London.

Ambrose scratched at his chin in puzzlement as we went over the clerks’ work. And then we flipped past the addresses to a dog-eared page near the back of the book. A brief explanatory note from a clerk explained that every fourth address in the book had contained an erroneous Burmese character, which when collated formed another set of coordinates, like the ones that marked the dynamite targets previously. This was an astonishing find, and both Ambrose and I examined the coordinates excitedly. The margin notes explained that each of the erroneous symbols had been added ‘almost certainly’ in several different hands, and that there were nine sets of coordinates present. The first three correlated to the scenes of three anarchist attacks the previous year; the fourth was Chelsea Hospital, and of unknown significance. The next four were identical to the ones noted on the scrap of paper, though again not written by the same person. The final coordinate was again of unknown significance, and seemed to point to an area of Commercial Road in Whitechapel. But even from memory, a pattern started to form in my mind.

‘I think I have something,’ I said.

‘Oh?’

‘Allow me to demonstrate.’ I unfurled my map and made a small cross at each of the coordinates listed in the book. I then drew Ambrose’s attention to those sites around the Marble Arch incident. Kensington Road. Lisson Grove. Old Bond Street, and Marble Arch itself. ‘I’ve tried to place my little crosses as close to the actual addresses as I can, given the scale of the map. Now look.’ I took the notebook that had been left by the clerks and used the edge of its binding as a makeshift rule, drawing a straight pencil-line between the three detonation sites.

‘A triangle?’ queried Ambrose, raising an eyebrow.

‘Indeed. And if we were to pinpoint the locations, and apply the proper mathematics, I expect that Marble Arch would be in the dead centre of that triangle. Now look at the other coordinates. Battersea Bridge Road and Battersea Park Road on the South Bank, and Sloane Street on the north—what lies in the centre of that triangle?

‘Well, it’s hard to be exact,’ replied Ambrose, ‘but it looks like Chelsea Hospital. That bears out the coordinates that we found, but there was no explosion at the hospital.’

‘Just as there was no explosion at Marble Arch,’ I explained patiently. ‘I believe the points of the triangle are prearranged targets for our group of anarchists, and the central coordinate represents their means of escape; perhaps a rendezvous point with others of their group.’

‘Your theory seems relatively sound, but why triangles? Why so precise? And how is an exposed archway in the middle of London a suitable means of escape?’

‘So many questions, and I confess I cannot answer them,’ I admitted. ‘Triangles? Who knows. Perhaps it is some cod-symbolic gesture used by the group. Freemasons use geometric shapes in their ritual symbology, do they not?’

Ambrose scoffed. ‘Come now, the great and the good of the grand lodges are unlikely to engage in dynamite crime.’

‘I never suggested they were,’ I said. ‘What I meant was that our group may have some occult or symbolic connection, which provides a motivation—or at least a direction—for their crimes. Look at the lists of names and addresses. So many of those people have a spiritualist or occult connection it cannot be coincidence. What we need to learn is whether those people are targets or collaborators, or both.’ I saw Ambrose waver, and knew I had started to convince him. I felt perhaps a flicker of triumph.

‘Oh, my sainted aunt! From latter-day Fenians to black magicians in one day,’ said Ambrose, looking plaintive. ‘I don’t fully understand—now that you point it out it almost seems too obvious; too easy—and yet why would one anarchist add to the work of another like this? And why write it down at all?’

‘The only reason for committing this information to writing,’ I replied, ‘would be the importance of precision. The exact locations must be important for some reason. I very much doubt we have all the information we require, but it is a start. Look at the original pocketbook that was recovered from Marble Arch, and the scrap of paper—I should have seen it before. They are not written by the same hand.’

Ambrose examined the items and nodded. ‘I think I know what you’re getting at,’ he said. ‘You think that the last coordinate was written by the same person who wrote the other four on that scrap of paper.’