Chapter 5 #2
She considered my instructions, her expression mulish, and I expected her to mount a fresh argument, but suddenly, her shoulders sagged.
“I cannot show my face at the Harbinger. They will all know I’ve been discharged,” she said, her tone still woebegone.
“You needn’t see the whole staff,” I reminded her. “Didn’t you tell me the archive is in a different building?”
She brightened a little. “It is. And Barnaby, the fellow in charge of the archive, he has always liked me. And I think he would like to get one over on the editor in chief. He is forever complaining that no one appreciates how difficult his job is.”
“There you are,” I said briskly. “It is settled. You find us a piece of useful information for this investigation, and I will secure you lodging and a small commission.”
She cocked her head to one side. “Board as well as lodging. A lady has to eat. And I suppose it is interesting, the vampire angle of the story. Also the notion of Harkness being driven to his death by something as small and innocuous as a bit of dried plant.” She grinned at me. “So I am an avenging Fury, am I?”
“Upon occasion,” I told her. “It is a role which suits you. Never forget that. And perhaps next time, not quite so much aguardiente. It does tend to leave one feeling very unsettled indeed.”
She put out her hand. “Very well. You have a bargain.”
Just then Stoker burst into another verse of his spectacularly filthy song, and I waved J. J. off. “You ought to go before he gets to the chorus.”
* * *
I had expected the task to take J. J. the better part of a week—the Harbinger being a daily newspaper meant the archives were vast—but to my astonishment she appeared late the same afternoon, bearing a slip of paper and wearing a triumphant expression.
She was still pale from her encounter with the aguardiente, but even its aftereffects could not dim her victory.
“Huzzah and hurrah,” she crowed. “I have a name.”
Stoker had emerged from his work begrimed but looking somewhat satisfied, and we had just settled down to a hearty tea of sandwiches and scones when J.
J. arrived. Before she would tell us more, she helped herself to a plate and heaped it with food, cramming a roast beef and lettuce sandwich into her mouth as she reached for the scones.
“I did not have time for luncheon,” she said, her voice muffled by the sandwich.
I plucked the piece of paper from her fingers and read it aloud. “ ‘Seward Johnson.’ Who is this?”
J. J. grinned as she swallowed. “Schoolmate of Jameson Harkness and Maurice Quincey. In the archive, I found a mention of the three of them at an event together. Then I looked up young Mr. Johnson himself. He is the younger grandson of a baronet and has a position as private secretary to the American industrialist millionaire Horace Von Hilsing.”
J. J. didn’t need to elaborate on the name of Horace Von Hilsing.
His was a name as familiar in Cape Town as California.
He had patented a special process to smelt steel from pig iron—a formula he had stolen from the Chinese, incidentally.
It was a process that Henry Bessemer refined and repatented ten years later, but that decade-long head start had been the foundation of the Von Hilsing fortune, a fortune which had made him extremely influential.
Early in his career, he had been known for the lavish entertainments he held as well as the politicians he courted.
No amount of money was too outlandish for him to spend if it meant he secured the government contracts he needed to further his aims.
But over the past few decades, he had become something of a recluse.
Although he had in his youth travelled frequently, he had settled in London in his later years, preferring to entertain in his own luxurious home on a tiny square so exclusive it had been renamed Steel Square in his honour.
Invitations to his dinners were coveted things until word circulated that Von Hilsing had become something of a health crank and limited himself—and his guests—to a strictly vegetarian diet.
The fatal blow was when an outraged marchioness claimed he insisted his dinner parties end with brisk walks about the garden and robust exercises on gymnasium equipment.
After one too many evenings spent eating parsnip pie washed down with plain milk, the stream of visitors to the grand house in Steel Square dried up.
The house was situated just behind the Duke of Wellington’s residence at Apsley House on Hyde Park Corner, an address so illustrious even Buckingham Palace could only look on with envy, but nothing could make up for the depressing food and endless discussions of health tonics and physical jerks that Von Hilsing inflicted upon his guests.
J. J. passed around a few cuttings about Von Hilsing, most dating back more than thirty years, the heyday of his international travels and lavish entertaining.
“He is less remarkable than I expected,” I observed as I studied a sketch of the millionaire. “He looks distinctly forgettable.”
“Disappointing,” J. J. agreed. “He is so very ordinary. One would like to think of him as having the form of Adonis and wisdom of Zeus to complement the riches of Croesus.”
“To what end?” Stoker asked. “Do you have designs upon the poor man? I thought you were completely opposed to the married state.”
“I am,” J. J. assured him. “In principle. But if an inordinately handsome man expressed a heartfelt wish to lavish his significant fortune upon me, it would take a woman of greater moral fibre than I to refuse him.”
They continued bantering for a few moments as I flicked through the cuttings.
They were much the same—profiles of the millionaire industrialist and the burgeoning eccentricities his money afforded him.
There were no photographs, but many pen-and-ink drawings, one with a set of bagpipes during his attempts to connect with his Scottish roots, he claimed, although one must wonder which part of the Highlands he thought the Von Hilsings had called home.
There was a flurry of articles detailing his various purchases of expensive gewgaws—a clock said to have belonged to Louis XIV, a handful of exquisitely expensive jewels, and an elephant purchased off a maharajah on a whim during a tour of India.
It was on this trip that he had begun to explore the benefits of eating solely plants and of bending oneself into unaccustomed shapes.
That article included an image of Von Hilsing wearing only a bit of loincloth, and I put it firmly aside as J.
J. returned to the subject of Seward Johnson.
“The Johnsons are familiar figures in diplomatic circles, particularly with Americans. Seward’s mother and grandmother were both American.”
“Well, we shall not hold it against him,” I said.
J. J. finished her first sandwich and reached for the second. “Would you like to know where Harkness, Quincey, and Johnson were seen together?”
“Pray tell,” Stoker said as he heaped a scone with cream and jam.
“At a meeting of the Harpocrates Society.”
“Harpocrates?” I asked.
“After the Roman god of secrets,” Stoker observed.
“That society sounds fictitious,” I put in.
“I think it is,” J. J. replied. “Or at least very discreet. I scoured the archives, and there is no other mention of it. This bit was in the society column, and I spoke with the reporter who inserted it. He said there was a brief period when he heard a few snippets about the society, but then it seemed to vanish as quickly as it had come. Either it disbanded or they got extremely good about keeping it extremely quiet.”
“Was there anything noteworthy about the society?”
J. J. shrugged. “It seems to have been founded by a fellow called Ruthven.” She pronounced it in the properly Scottish fashion. Ri-ven.
Stoker went on. “There are dozens of Ruthvens knocking about. Anything special about this one? A forename, for instance.”
“My source is unfortunately given to a bit of tippling at work. The archive is a solitary and dusty place, and he finds a pint or two of bitters helps the hours pass more swiftly.”
“So he was intoxicated when you questioned him?” I suggested.
“Almost entirely inebriated, although I should point out that the average newspaperman is inured to the worst effects of insobriety. In this case, he was recalling insignificant details from the briefest of mentions. I marvel he remembered anything at all.”
“Did any of them ask for inclusion in the society column?” I asked.
“No, which is curious for a group that seemed to be open to new members. In fact, there was a polite but very firmly worded request by Lord Ruthven not to give any more publicity to the group, as he intended it to be invitation only. It seems Seward’s late mother, being something of a social climber, was the one who gave the item to the paper in the first place. ”
“Why on earth would she think a mention in the Harbinger would carry any social cachet?” Stoker demanded with the bone-deep outrage that only a born aristocrat could muster.
J. J. shrugged. “As I said, American. She must not have realised how finely calibrated such things are in England. And before you ask, no, we cannot question her. She returned to New York some time ago and, rather inconveniently for us, died.”
“When was the item published in the newspaper?” Stoker asked.
“Just over a year ago.” J. J. reached for a fresh sandwich, this one potted shrimps. “Oh, that is heavenly,” she said after the first bite.
“Cook keeps an herb garden just outside the kitchen door,” Stoker told her.
“Fruit trees as well, which is why her preserves are so good. She adds a single quince to the orange marmalade, and it really sings. What you’re tasting in the potted shrimps is a bit of fennel.
An unexpected choice, but the aromatic sharpness is an excellent foil to the sweetness of the shellfish. ”
“It makes all the difference,” J. J. agreed.
I rapped sharply upon the table. “If I might draw your attention back to the investigation?”
J. J. shrugged. “I have told you everything I discovered. Harkness, Quincey, and Johnson all attended a lecture together, and Johnson is currently in the employ of the American millionaire Von Hilsing. I have earned my reward,” she added, reaching for a miniature cherry cake studded with almonds.
I rose, dusting the crumbs of a scone from my fingertips as I reached for my cloak. “Come along, then. We must seek Mr. Johnson at once.”
Stoker stared mournfully at the lavish trays. “I have only just begun to eat, Veronica. It is teatime.”
“All the more reason to go now—Mr. Johnson will be obliged to offer us refreshment, and confidences are always more easily pried from a man holding a teacup. Yes, J. J.?”
She had opened her mouth to ask a question but broke off to stare—in surprise or admiration, I was not certain which—as Stoker crammed a handful of scones into his pocket. “Have you arranged for my lodging?” she managed finally.
“Lord Rosemorran was amenable to your use of the Bavarian cottage, at least for a fortnight,” I told her.
“It is currently empty, so he is having it thoroughly cleaned and aired today and a few pieces of furniture moved in. It shall be ready for habitation tomorrow, if you do not mind sharing with me for another night.”
“Excellent. I have a carter bringing my things in an hour or so. In the meantime, I shall reap my just rewards for a good morning’s work,” she announced. She opened a chicken sandwich and began to parcel out the roasted meat to the dogs.
Stoker’s expression was gloomy as he pulled shut the door of the Belvedere.
“Why are you sulking?” I asked, buttoning my cloak against the spring damp.
“Chicken and chutney sandwiches are my favorite, and she’s giving them to the bloody dogs,” he muttered.
“No matter,” I soothed him. “I shall make it well worth your while later.”
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* A Grave Robbery