Chapter 17 #2
He required no further inducement. Before I could enumerate my reasons—or my intended destination—he had flung aside his tools and snatched up his coat.
I took a moment longer to ready myself, but we were soon striding along the London streets.
The afternoon sun slanted over the rooftops, gilding everything to a prettiness that might not stand close scrutiny but was nonetheless pleasing to the eye.
The chestnut sellers were about, hawking their fragrant wares, and if the aroma was somewhat overpowered by the scent of the horses’ arisings, I did not much mind.
The flower sellers were clutching their bouquets, armfuls of apple blossom and cherry blossom jostling with the first peonies.
Stoker flung one a tuppence, collecting a nosegay of tiny, perfect white blooms, which he presented to me.
The miniature flowers were clustered along slender stems, dangling like pearls between the ensiform leaves of deep, glossy green.
I promptly took one sprig to thread into his buttonhole and sniffed appreciatively at the others.
“Lily of the valley! How lovely,” I said, admiring the way the little flowers perched en tremblant upon the stems. “Curious that it should symbolise happiness when it is so very lethal.”
Stoker’s gaze narrowed. “You have been at your florilegium again.”
“I may have dipped into a page or two this afternoon,” I admitted. “Between tasks.”
He flicked the sprig in his buttonhole with a finger, sending the little spray of flowers bobbing. “Exactly how lethal?”
“So lethal merely ingesting the water in which the flowers have been held is enough to induce fatality.”
“Jesus!” Stoker plucked the stem from his buttonhole and watched as it flew in a graceful arc into the gutter. He reached for my bouquet, but I held it away.
“I seldom receive flowers from my inamorato,” I informed him. “I shall thank you to leave them be.”
“At least you are wearing gloves,” he said darkly as he scrubbed at his own hand with his handkerchief.
“Never mind,” I soothed. “You are a man in the prime of his life. I have no doubt your constitution can withstand exposure to a little lily of the valley.”
We walked a few more steps before he turned to me, his tone deliberately casual. “And if one were to experience the effects of exposure? How precisely would they manifest?”
“Through loss of consciousness or irregularity of the heartbeat,” I said promptly. “Do tell me if you are feeling faint so that I may catch you.”
We walked on, threading our way through the teeming city streets.
The air was brisk, but there was the promise of spring ripening on the wind.
I would have given my best net to have been in the countryside proper, striding about on the chase for the first butterflies of the season to emerge.
I may have given up the hunt for specimens to kill, but I still longed for the thrill of the pursuit itself.
One may admire what one does not seek to own, I reflected.
And it occurred to me then that our forays into detection had neatly dovetailed with the ending of my travels.
Was I chasing murderers as a substitute for hunting specimens?
Had I unwittingly traded the field work of a lepidopterist for that of a detective?
“Is it a tasty one?” Stoker asked mildly.
“Is what tasty?”
“The problem you are currently chewing over. I am familiar with that face—it means you are wrestling with a conundrum, usually of the philosophical variety. What is it this time?”
“I was merely pondering the fact that we began our investigative exploits just at the time that I gave up travelling abroad on butterflying expeditions.”
“And you are wondering if the two are connected?” he suggested as we dodged an omnibus to cross the street.
“Are they not? They have much in common. The excitement of the chase, the uncertainty of success, the thrill of the victorious outcome.”
“The loss of a particularly desirable specimen,” he added. “We have not always been successful.”
“True. But this is a discussion best had another time,” I said. “We have arrived.”
We stood in the road, as near to the spot where Maurice Quincey’s body had been discovered as we could manage.
This bit of Swain’s Lane, a narrow and nondescript street, passed between two portions of Highgate Cemetery at the only spot where they overlapped, the east and west sections being entirely separate.
“East or west,” I asked Stoker.
“West,” he said promptly. “It is the oldest bit.”
I turned left and led the way some yards down the street to where a pair of tall iron gates stood. I was pleased to find the gates were closed but unlocked. We tarried a moment, taking in our surroundings.
“Well, this smacks of morbidity,” Stoker said as we peered through the gates.
The word “cemetery” often conjures images of tidy churchyards, the dead tucked into neat rows like so many parishioners in their pews.
Even if the monuments and gravestones are varied, there is usually a sort of orderliness to a well-kept cemetery.
Highgate was nothing like this. To begin with, it was vast, some fifteen hectares—nearly forty acres for this encampment of the dead.
The west portion contained two of the great landmarks of the cemetery, the Egyptian Avenue and the Circle of Lebanon.
The Egyptian Avenue comprised sixteen vaults of great exclusivity, allowing the rich to be buried as they lived—largely away from anyone else.
It featured an inverted torch, a symbol of eternal life and a curious one, I thought.
The fastest way to put out a torch was to turn it upside down and smother the flame.
But I did not make my observation aloud.
Stoker was always of uncertain temper in a graveyard, no doubt because his beloved mother resided in one.
We moved through the Circle of Lebanon, with its crescents of crypts surrounding a cedar of Lebanon of tremendous antiquity, some two centuries at least. Its spreading branches carried shade into the furthest edges of this part of the cemetery, and I was happy to pass into the next part, where the various shrubs and bushes provided abundant habitat for birds and squirrels.
They sang and chattered and hurried about, no doubt attempting to secure titbits for their suppers before night fell.
I had thought we departed in good time, but inside the cemetery it was much darker than I had anticipated even as the sun still shone upon the street outside.
The warmth of its rays did not seem to penetrate the cold, ivy-crept stone of the various monuments and mausolea.
Mosses and lichens carpeted the pathways and dressed the statues, from the slumbering cherubs to the elegantly veiled pleurants, the elaborate weeping ladies who decorated the richest tombs with their graceful, tearful sorrow.
“What are we looking for?” Stoker asked, his voice scarcely above a whisper. There was no one about, but I understood the inclination to keep one’s voice low. It was not the living we were afraid to disturb; it was the dead.
“I do not know,” I admitted. “I wondered if there might be some sign of Ruthven and Asphodel’s activities here.”
“Because of what Thomas said? About the woman in black?”
“A woman who might well have been Asphodel, here in the same place Quincey’s body was found. You must admit it is a clue,” I replied, recalling his earlier obstinacy on the point.
“It is not a clue,” he countered. “It is a bloody cemetery, Veronica. They are full of ladies in black. They are called widows.”
“I still think the possibility of a connection must be investigated,” I told him. “Asphodel and Ruthven may well get up to some dark mischief in this place—mischief which ended in Quincey’s death.”
“Here? When they have the whole of their house to devote to whatever nefarious activities they wish?”
“But how much more effective rituals and ceremonies would be here!” I said, leading the way off the main path and onto a much narrower, more secluded walk.
“The house is evocative, yes, but this is truly atmospheric. And why was Maurice Quincey found just outside if there is no connection to the cemetery itself? He did not live anywhere near. No, I am convinced Asphodel and Ruthven have been using Highgate as a scene for their intrigues.”
Stoker gave a grunt that I interpreted as agreement, and we continued on, taking another little path that branched off, and then still another.
We had twisted and turned our way into the beating heart of the cemetery, and as we emerged into an open space, I noticed something unexpected and slightly ominous.
“The birds have gone silent,” Stoker said suddenly.
“It does not feel particularly welcoming,” I replied. When one has hunted butterflies as extensively as I have—and particularly if one is female—one develops a sixth sense for places that are insalubrious, to say nothing of the downright dangerous.
This place was something else entirely. If I were a superstitious person, which I am most decidedly not, I would have shivered and peered behind me, waiting for the trailing, slithering step of something not dead, but not entirely alive.
It was a place for hauntings, where the angels that wept over lavish tombs might turn their heads ever so slightly to watch one pass.
“Veronica, are you quite all right?” Stoker’s voice was mildly amused.
“Yes, of course. Why do you ask?” I inquired, my own voice determinedly hearty.
“Because you are clutching me so tightly you have bruised my arm,” he returned.
I pried my fingers free with only a little difficulty, but just then a sound came from behind us—a sort of scuttling, scuffing, dragging noise that sounded like nothing of this earth. I sprang into action, instantly ready to do battle on Stoker’s behalf.
“Behind me!” I cried to him, thrusting him backwards with one hand whilst I reached for my hatpin with the other as an ancient battle cry I had learnt from a Scottish entomologist issued from my lips.
In the course of accomplishing these actions, I planted my booted foot upon the nearest headstone and launched myself into an arc towards our attacker, flinging my body between Stoker and danger, determined to battle the culprit with all of my strength.
I struck my other foot directly into the miscreant’s midsection, forcing him to the ground, supine and gasping for breath as I landed atop him, neatly straddling his rib cage, my feet hooked about his hips, rendering his legs immobile.
His bowler hat had settled over his face, shielding his identity, and I gave no quarter.
The hatpin was poised at his jugular, and I pricked him gently to show that I meant business.
“Reveal yourself, devil!” I cried.
“For the love of bleeding Jesus and all his seven saints,” came the muffled response from inside the bowler.
Stoker dropped a restraining hand to my shoulder. “Rise, dearest. You have just assaulted a friend.”
And with that, Detective Inspector Mornaday of Special Branch, Scotland Yard, pushed me away, rolled to his side, and was lavishly sick in the grass.