CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN #2
I had discovered that, in light of his stubbornness, the most expedient way of dealing with him was simply to do as I pleased and trust he would follow.
His own innate sense of chivalry as well as his natural curiosity would make certain of that.
Against Stoker’s better judgment we repaired to his workshop.
I had argued successfully that it was far closer to the Tower than Bishop’s Folly and had the added benefit of leaving the Beauclerks entirely out of it.
Our things had been left at the Folly, but at least we retained possession of the most important—the packets of information that proved my true identity.
I rewrapped them together carefully, using a piece of plain brown paper from Stoker’s supply to bundle them all.
I tied them with a bit of butcher’s twine as Stoker coaxed up the fire in his stove.
Absently, I crumbled a bit of the broken sealing wax in my fingers.
“Don’t,” he ordered.
“It is getting on the floor and Huxley oughtn’t eat it.”
I was not surprised he had turned pernickety.
The specter of impending death will do that to some people.
In my case, it made me rather fidgety, and I paced the room, picking up specimens and putting them down again.
“This plover is molting,” I told him.
He removed it from my grasp and brushed the feathers from my fingers.
“A plover is a nonpasserine.
This is a cuckooshrike.
And you could have seen it is a passerine from its toes if you had cared to look.”
I pulled a face at him but left him to his wretched cuckooshrike.
I never much cared for birds anyway.
Instead I plucked one of his ancient newspapers at random and began to read.
We had been there only a short while when Badger arrived to look in on Huxley.
“Mr. S.!
I didn’t look to see you back already.”
Stoker gave the boy a smile.
“Neither did I. Miss Speedwell has a pair of notes she would like for you to deliver.
And a shilling for your trouble.
Any questions?”
The boy’s eyes shone.
“Nay.”
“And here is a little something more.
We shall need food for tonight and tomorrow.
Nothing tricky—just a few meat pies and a bit of cheese, maybe some oysters.
Bring a loaf and a few bottles of beer as well.”
“Aye, Mr. S.” He tugged the brim of his cap and disappeared, taking Huxley with him for a walk.
We did not speak while he was gone.
Stoker worked at his elephant while I returned to his stacks of outdated newspapers, assembling everything I could find on Special Branch, Irish separatists, and the men who concerned themselves with directing the business of the court.
Badger returned in a few hours’ time with a basket of food and Huxley, now thoroughly exercised.
I put down a dish of fresh water and the dog drank deeply, thrusting his entire face into the bowl, then flopped down onto the floor, where he promptly went to sleep.
“Any trouble?”
I asked.
“No, miss.
I handed one over at the Empress of India Hotel, the other at Scotland Yard,” he told me with an avid gleam.
Clearly his trip to the Yard had impressed him mightily.
“Excellent.
Thank you.”
He turned to go, and Stoker put a hand to his shoulder.
“Badger, thank you for your care of Huxley whilst I was away.
He looks fit.”
The boy grinned.
“It weren’t nowt,” he assured Stoker.
“Just the same, it is appreciated.”
He hesitated then, and I saw genuine regard for the boy on his face.
“Tonight, lad.
Don’t come here.”
Badger’s brow furrowed.
“Sir?”
“It may not be safe.”
Badger’s pointed little chin seemed to sharpen.
“I’m good in a fight if you need a fellow to stand at your back.”
Stoker turned to me with anguished eyes.
I stepped forward.
“You are a stalwart companion,” I told him.
“But this is something Mr. Stoker and I have to do alone.”
“All right, then,” he said, but with a grudging air.
He left then and Stoker’s shoulders sagged.
“Bloody hell.
That about did me in.
Such a small fellow for such a stout heart.”
“He will grow up to be a man like you,” I told him.
“Loyal above all else.”
Stoker turned his back and returned to his elephant.
I was not surprised.
We like to believe it is the power of language that gives us superiority over animals, but words have their limitations.
For the rest of that day we carried on, Stoker with his elephant and notebooks, me with the newspapers, each of us piecing together the disparate parts.
While Stoker stitched and glued his pachyderm and devoted hours to writing up his notes, I assembled a portrait of the men who were likely at the heart of the plot against us.
Mornaday had been mentioned in the newspapers a number of times, and it was apparent from his various successes that he was a force to be reckoned with.
He was clever and resourceful, often using disguises in the quest to run his prey to ground.
I clucked my tongue in annoyance at this.
I had rather liked him for a villain, and here his credentials were firmly established.
He
was a proper detective, blast the man.
But I consoled myself with the notion that he could be both detective and blackguard, using his position to accomplish dark deeds in the service of some shadowy overseer.
He had been promoted as a result of unmasking the Kennington Slasher, and there was a photograph of Mornaday standing at the gallows when the fellow was hanged—next to his superior, Sir Hugo Montgomerie.
I handed the paper to Stoker.
“It appears that Mornaday is indeed a detective,” I told him.
“He has received commendations.”
He scrutinized the photograph.
Like all newspaper likenesses, this one was blurry and indistinct, but it was enough.
It was clearly Mornaday, but it was not this familiar face that caused Stoker to curse.
“Bloody hell.
Sir Hugo Montgomerie.
Head of Special Branch.”
“You know him?”
“In a manner of speaking,” he said darkly.
“Our paths crossed once.
Many years ago.”
“How?”
I demanded.
“And no more of your evasions.
I have let you keep your secrets, but not this one.
It might be pertinent.”
“It isn’t,” he insisted.
But he began to tell me the story anyway.
“I was rather unhappy as a boy, which you may well understand having met my brother.”
“I can see the two of you are not close,” I temporized.
He gave a snort.
“If I were to avail myself of a coat of arms, it would feature a black sheep rampant.
In any event, after one particularly gruesome scene, I left home.”
“How old were you?”
“Eleven, twelve,” he said carelessly.
“I’ve forgot.”
“And that’s when you went to the traveling show,” I supplied, putting the pieces together at last.
A whisper of nostalgia flickered over his features.
“They were kind enough to take me in.
The professor was not such a tightfisted bastard in those days,” he added.
“I learned conjuring tricks and knife throwing and a few other useful things.”
“Like the carnal pleasures,” I put in, thinking of Salome’s revelations.
“Goodness me, Stoker, at eleven or twelve?
You
were a prodigy.”
“
May I finish?”
“Do carry on,” I urged.
“In any event, I stayed with them for some time, almost half a year before my father’s pet detective managed to track me.
It was Montgomerie.
He was not with the Yard at the time, and he bloody well wasn’t
Sir Hugo.
But it explains how quickly Scotland Yard got onto me as a suspect in Max’s death.
Montgomerie was a meticulous sort of fellow.
I’ve little doubt he kept his case notes from my disappearance—and when Max was murdered it would have been short work to discover that I had been one of his associates.”
“And easy to confirm that you were still in contact as soon as they waded through the baron’s business papers and realized you were his tenant.”
I glanced around the workshop.
“You said he intended to leave his fortune to one of his favorite institutions?
What will they do with it?”
Stoker shrugged.
“I am sure they will sell it off to someone or other for use as a warehouse again.
The river is badly silted up at the dock, but that can always be dredged.”
“And you will lose your home.”
“This is not home, Veronica,” he said in a hollow voice.
“It is merely a place where I live.”
He returned to his elephant then, hammering ferociously at one of the supports, and I thought of the first time I had goaded him out of his silence by pricking his temper.
But it was not his rage I wanted then.
For the first time in a very long time, I wanted something quite different from another human being—and as I explored that want I recognized it as a longing for reassurance.
“Stoker.”
Something in my tone must have conveyed itself, for he put down his hammer and turned.
“Yes?”
“Do you ever think about death?”
They were not the words I intended to speak, but they would do to begin.
Huxley climbed into my lap and I petted him, running my fingers through his coarse hair.
He spread his hands, encompassing the whole of his workshop.
“Every day.
I am surrounded by it.”
“I mean your own.”
“I have.
I’ve come closer than most,” he reminded me.
“In Brazil?”
Huxley gave a damp snuffle and settled onto my lap.
“And other places,” he told me.
“Have you thought about it?”
“Never.
Not in Corsica or Mexico or Sarawak.
Not even in Sumatra when that bloody volcano was erupting.
I always thought everything would be all right.
I always believed when I closed my eyes at night that I would wake again in the morning.
I knew the sun was just over the horizon, and I believed I would live to see it rise again.
I suppose you think I’m very stupid,” I finished, trailing off.
“On the contrary, Veronica.
I think that is the only way to live.”
If only his voice had not been quite so gentle; if only he had comprehended me just a little less.
I would never have voiced my doubts.
It is easy to stiffen one’s upper lip and carry on when you dare not share your cowardice for fear of being misunderstood.
But it is a difficult thing to heft one’s burden alone when there is someone willing to share it.
“Stoker, what if I’ve blundered?”
I asked suddenly, the words bursting out in a torrent.