The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction (40 page)

“It’s four—”

“Yes indeed, those hieroglyphs will be quickly read. I have a book—”

“The letters will need application of the code-breaking—’

“Indeed, we can begin with the simple frequency system and go on from there—”

“But those equations—”

“Yes, Ada, they will prove troublesome, but I’m sure we can do it.”

Clark had stopped his nervous prowling and had been excitedly listening to their interplay. “Then you think it does mean something?” he interrupted.

“We won’t know till we’ve cracked some of it, but, yes, I think this is a coded message.”

As the two men talked, Ada stared down at the paper, allowing the pictures, letters and symbols to flow, reform, break up, so that her mind could explore and absorb without direction. On another level, she was aware that Constable Duckett was saying, “I don’t know why I was chosen, or whether I was mistook for someone else.” And Clark replying, “It feels as if we are being played with.” Charles countered with, “We have no certainties until we uncover the true meaning of the codes or ciphers.”

“Wanstead Abbey,” Ada heard herself saying.

All three men stopped speaking and stared at her. She pointed to the three lone symbols at the bottom. “Surely that’s a gryphon, and, beside it, what could be a lake, and the sign of a cross.”

“It could be any ecclesiastical building,” Charles said gently. “And those three symbols may be related to the context of the other codes—”

But Clark had seized on her words. “Wanstead Abbey? But that’s where—”

“I know, my … Lord Byron lived there.” She sounded as indifferent as she could. “It’s all I know about him.” She turned away and drank some more of the rich wine. It was William who’d described to her – in the most romantic terms – the now ruined Abbey where her father had once lived, and near which he was buried.

“It all falls into place!” Clark was saying. “This must be the focus for Republicanism, the hidden face behind the philosophical unionists and their talk of Charters and Rights. Is it Irish Home Rule, or some more sinister form of Radicalism? We must find out. I was right to take this seriously. It is either a warning to us, or we’ve intercepted a message destined for another conspirator. Mr Babbage, will you bend all your powers to unravelling these codes, and put everything else aside? We must know what it says. For the safety of the realm.”

On the carriage ride back home to Fordhook, Ada studied the copy she’d made of the coded message, with the Under Secretary’s permission. She knew Charles was right. They should not necessarily interpret those three symbols as meaning Wanstead Abbey. There had been no rumours, no whispers, of a movement using that name as their rallying cry. And the composer of the message could not have known that she, or anyone of her family, would see it. Until the answer was found, they must be open-minded. At home she had her own pamphlets and notes on hieroglyphs – it would be a race between her and Charles how quickly these could be translated. But she did not have the key to the rest. She hoped to learn from Charles.

Was Under Secretary Clark over-reacting when he feared a threatening conspiracy to overthrow the government and establish a republic? She sighed. Her mother was not the only one to worry about such things. Would a republic be such a bad thing, she brooded? No Englishman could feel proud of their recent monarchs, though William IV was not as embarrassing in his excesses as George IV. Lady Byron often remarked that the Court set a terrible example and did not command respect. But then she said the same thing about Members of Parliament too. Only the Duke of Wellington, now their Prime Minister, escaped her criticism, but those who hated the way he’d let the Reform Act go through were not republicans!

I must listen carefully at Lady Conway’s Ball tonight, she thought, and pay attention to what is being said about politics and the matters of the day, instead of just enjoying myself showing off my costume and dancing. At least I have the advantage in that my mind is trained to notice such things.

She put the paper away in her purse – made of matching red silk and decorated with a black transfer-printed motif of the Tower of London – and found herself thinking of Constable Robert Duckett. There had been an honesty about him, and his manner was neither subservient nor insolent. Why did he make her think of William? She managed to hide it from her mother and the Furies, but she still felt pain at the thought of the young man who would have been her husband for the past eighteen months, if their elopement had not been thwarted. They’d barely managed to make it down the driveway that night. Where was he now? She hoped he’d managed to obtain another post as tutor, and was comfortable somewhere. But, a tiny part of her acknowledged, it had been a lucky escape. His energy and ardour had not matched her own.

Not that she thought of Robert in the same way. He was only a constable, albeit good-looking and someone with initiative. A girl would be happy to be seen on his arm.

*

Robert pulled his coat closer around him against a squally burst of rain. What a dreary night to be out without my snug uniform, he thought. It was strange to be out without it. When he’d first joined the Metropolitan Police, freshly recruited from Bristol, he’d felt very conspicuous wearing it at all times, as he was pledged to do. Now he felt vulnerable without it.

He paused. Looking up and to his right he could make out, through the foggy gloom, the dome of St Paul’s in the distance. He was headed, though, for somewhere godless – or so people said – towards St Giles and the Rookery. One of those warrens of alleys and courts, with ancient houses that jutted out above till they almost touched, tottering and in danger of collapse. Not a week went by, it seemed, than one old house or another collapsed in a cloud of choking dust, killing anyone unfortunate enough to be asleep inside. The Old Mint, Turnmill Street, Saffron Hall, whatever the warren was called it was always the same, as densely packed with humanity as a sewer with rats. Sometimes two families occupied just one room, sleeping space on stairways was hotly contested, and spots in hallways rented out.

These people might scratch some kind of living in an honest job, but the vast majority were engaged in some form of criminal activity or another – from as young as an orphan boy who could pick pockets, to the ancient ones, bent-backed and grey. Whole courts were devoted to such trades as pick-pocketry, swindling, or confidence-trickstering. And nowhere could you escape the smell of unwashed bodies and clothes, of open drains and sewers and the dankness of regular flooding in the cellars from the River Thames, kindly returning the sewage that had been dumped in her earlier. He took an experimental sniff now, and nearly choked, his stomach churning.

What a contrast he thought, turning up his collar, from his visit to Mr Babbage’s house in Marylebone. The new houses in the West End were built of smart stone, the streets were wide and well paved and lit with the new gas-lighting at regular intervals. Not only there but all over London was the feel of a town making goods, selling goods, importing and exporting them, inventing them and advertising them. As well as sewers, there was a smell of money. The chasm between those with money and the huge number who lived in worse conditions than a pig in its sty seemed to grow bigger every day, especially as the numbers of poor were swelled continuously by those arriving from a failing countryside, their rural lives even harder than those in the towns.

Robert was one of the lucky ones though, even if his job might be dangerous at times, like tonight. “Duckett,” Sergeant Cummings had said five days after the meeting at Babbage’s house, his little sandy moustache bristling, “That government man has sent for you again. A special job he says. Mind you do your best.”

“I will Sarge,” Robert had promised.

He’d arrived at an address not far from the new General Post Office building near the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields. From not far off came the sounds of hammering and construction, as the fire-blackened ruin of the old Houses of Parliament was removed, to make way for the new grand building designed by Barry.

He was shown into a small, cold windowless antechamber painted cream, one wall being devoted to leatherbound volumes of law. Under Secretary Clark joined him in there, and began his usual agitated walking as he spoke in a breathless way.

“I could’ve called upon one of the old Runners – most’ve them have gone into private investigations, and it really is no good that we have no detecting force now, though I intend to put forward ideas to change that – but I decided the fewer who know the better. You’ve not been talking?”

“No, only me and the Sergeant know and we don’t even talk to each other.”

“Good man, good man. I have news. Mr Babbage has made some progress, in fact he sounded almost disappointed that the first quadrant of code was so easy to crack.”

Robert was still. “What does it say?”

Clark stopped in front of him. “It’s not good. It says: ‘You have looked on my works, and ignored them, the cleansing fire, the falling rocks. Beware my next eruption.’”

“You were right sir, it looks like a warning. What of Miss Byron’s reading of the signature?”

“It still seems possible, but we can only wait as they work on the rest. Babbage mentioned something about frequencies and transpositions which I don’t understand. I leave all that to him. Meanwhile, I have used my own official channels and have found that the mastermind of last Friday’s meeting lives and works in the Rookery, very near the White Hart Inn itself. I’m asking you to go there – not in uniform of course – and strike up a conversation, see what you can find out.”

“You don’t think our coder is the same person who organized the meeting then?”

“That’s Connor O’Brien, a hothead, with links to protection rackets, but this is not his style.”

Robert nodded. “The man who penned this message, though, he must be an educated man, maybe someone who’s fallen on hard times.”

“Or deliberately turned his talents to criminal activity. There are plenty of clever minds in these rookeries, the ones that organize the faking and the swindling.”

“But why choose such a random way of passing on his message?”

Clark’s face darkened as he paced up and down. “He thinks he’s a clever man, much cleverer than us. This is part of his cat-and-mouse game. If we don’t respond, he scores, then he tries again. Thank you, Constable Duckett, report back direct to me.” Then as Robert did not leave he said, “You have a question?”

“He says his previous messages have been ignored. What did he mean?”

“I was afraid you’d ask that. This is to go no further, understand?” Clark leaned closer and spoke in a low voice. “There have been two earlier messages, both dismissed as nonsense. One was pushed through Wellington’s letterbox and was written in children’s doggerel verse. It spoke of houses tumbling down – and there was that terrible collapse in Borough when many died and were injured. The second, we worked out, was Biblical References, and, when we found the verses, fire and brimstone were mentioned—”

“The Houses of Parliament burned down earlier this year.” Robert was ahead of him.

“Exactly. There has never been any suggestion the fire was anything but an accident but … we can’t take any chances.”

Now, Robert looked up at the sign of the Inn. Outside was a board advertising an Ordinary Fish Supper. He was the bait, he thought, being sent in in the hope that their fish would reveal something of himself. Even though he would revert to his full Bristolian accent, and mention Dorset enough he’d be associated with the Tolpuddle martyrs, he was sure the people here could sniff out a policeman a mile away, however much he tried to disguise himself.

Four tankards of watered down ale, with an “aftertaste of the Thames” later, he’d made four new “brothers”, who promised to let him know when the next political meeting was being held – “Legal or otherwise” – and they’d make them all illegal if they could. “Combined, we can make a difference, ain’t that right?” one had said.

He staggered across the threshold, the sound of Irish singing in his ears, and began to thread his way along the alley towards the bigger, safer street ahead. He tried to marshal the few facts he’d gleaned into some sort of order before they floated away in a beer haze. Names of speakers, the principles of combining into unions; was there any fact or name that stood out? Someone who was a bit different, whether in speech or beliefs? He thought there was something that had been said, but what was it? He tripped on something sludgy and nameless in the dark and automatically put out a hand to steady himself when …

Pain exploded across his left shoulder, he lost his balance completely and collapsed on the ground, hitting his forehead. All the breath seemed to have left his body and he struggled to breathe. As he blinked to clear the cloudiness from his eyes, he felt the hard cap of a boot connect with his ribs, then another. He tried to curl into a ball but could not make his body obey. The shock of the attack had robbed him of control over his limbs as well as his senses.

Then he heard a shout, “Here, you! Leave that man! Get off him!” He heard footsteps running off, and then felt the blissful end to the well-aimed kicks.

Robert managed to pry his eyes open. A face swam into view.

“What took you so long?” he managed to croak. “Nearly had him, though, didn’t I?”

“Sure,” came Will’s cheery voice. “You had him against the ropes. Think you can stand?”

With Will’s arm supporting him Robert managed to clamber upright on to wobbly legs.

“Ouch. He must’ve had steel caps on those boots. I thought you were never coming. You know I bruise easily!”

“Had to finish my ale didn’t I, keep up appearances. Besides, I’d bought the round.”

“Nothing … to do … with the pretty barmaid then?” Robert panted, then groaned as he took a step.

“What an idea! Good thing you asked me to shadow you and watch your back. What’ve you done to rile that man? Owe him some money do you? But isn’t this the place we came the other night.”

Robert nodded, and instantly felt sick. “Thought I’d try and spot the one who shoved that paper on me, find out why me … ooh, I feel dizzy.”