Chapter 30 #3
He raised his arm, the little revolver emerging from the heavy folds of his sleeves.
“That is quite enough, thank you,” he said, his voice underpinned with a note of steel I had not heard before. Hegarty sagged against Asphodel, and she helped him to his feet.
“Go,” Johnson told us, jerking the revolver in the direction of the nearest crypt.
In other circumstances, we might have thwarted him by the simple means of each leaping in a different direction.
He could not, after all, shoot us both simultaneously.
But Stoker was still weaving a little, and I would do nothing that might endanger him.
I had no idea if Johnson were practised at taking people hostage, but it is never a wise notion to argue with a man holding a gun, I have always said.
“Single file,” he ordered. “Miss Speedwell, you will follow Mr. Templeton-Vane.” It was a well-considered move.
With my own body as a buffer between them, it ensured Stoker would attempt nothing heroic at the possible risk to my person.
And Johnson was careful to keep a short distance between us, far enough that he would have ample time to shoot me should I decide to launch myself at him.
Our options were, at the moment, limited—something Stoker agreed with, for he turned his head and murmured to me, “Do as he says. We will get free later.”
“Unless he shoots us first,” I countered.
“Miss Speedwell, I beg you, do not force my hand,” Johnson said politely.
His tone was even, but his hand trembled, and it occurred to me that—in spite of my instinct to launch an attack upon him—he was unpredictable, and upsetting him further would not be our best strategy.
Instead, I followed Stoker into the crypt.
It was a narrow thing, just a short walkway between two broad shelves, each holding a coffin.
The whole thing was fashioned of pale, creamy marble, embellished as lavishly as a cake with scrolls and cherubs and flowers.
An enormous urn held long stems of roses, once red perhaps but now faded, the petals brittle as parchment in death.
At the far end of the crypt was a small iron door set into the marble floor.
It had been stood open, and through it I could see a staircase.
“Down, please,” Johnson said. We obeyed this as well, and I could tell from the sprightliness of Stoker’s step that he was assessing the situation with the same practised eye as I.
The short flight of stairs led to a subterranean chamber, an undercrypt, this one far nastier than the building above. Here the coffins had been exposed to damp, the walls running with trickling water. The air smelt thickly of mould—and bone, I fancied.
Stoker and I moved into the undercrypt, herded forwards by Johnson and his little gun. The chamber was lined with stone, and if he discharged his weapon here, not only would the noise be deafening, the ricochet would be too dangerous to risk.
He pushed us to the furthest reaches of the room. Behind him, Hegarty and Asphodel followed. Hegarty’s nose still streamed gore, and Asphodel had a murderous glint in her eye. Johnson was by far the most reasonable of the trio.
I thought.
But he turned his head slightly to address Hegarty. “Miles, I think you know we shall have to kill them.”
He had the grace to sound regretful, and I wondered if he might be swayed from his position.
Hegarty at least opposed him. He staggered a step or two nearer, leaving Asphodel at the foot of the stairs.
He put a hand to Johnson’s shoulder. “I do not think so, Seward. Can we not simply leave them here? It would take them ages to get out if they are able to make an escape at all. And we shall all be away by then.”
His voice was gentle—persuasive, even. But I could see Johnson was undeterred.
“You may be too softhearted,” he said to Hegarty. He turned towards us and lifted the gun a little straighter.
Stoker immediately thrust me behind him, but I was not prepared to let such an attempt at heroism stand without making an effort of my own.
I ducked under Stoker’s arm, emerging to face Johnson.
Stoker growled a little, but I ignored him, locking eyes with our potential killer, pinning him in place.
“Are your colleagues aware that you have made plans to abandon them? I know that you mean to run, and not to the Continent,” I said to him.
“I have been to the Belleville offices.”
“Oh.” He breathed out the single syllable in an exhalation of perfect resignation.
“That is not new information,” Asphodel said dismissively from her post at the foot of the stairs.
“We knew he intended to leave. Now that we have what we wanted, he is free to go with his share—to New York, wherever he chooses. Meanwhile, Miles and I will remove ourselves to the Continent, won’t we, darling? ”
Her eyes were gleaming as she revelled in her triumph, and for a moment, I permitted it. I knew how hard the next revelation would be for her to hear, and so I allowed her one last minute to nurse her illusions.
Then I turned to Miles Hegarty. “But that isn’t right, is it? Because Seward Johnson did not book passage to New York for just himself. You mean to go with him.”
Asphodel’s lips parted scornfully. “Don’t be stupid.
Miles and I are leaving tomorrow for Paris and thence to Marseille.
We say good-bye to Johnson here. Tonight.
” But the more she talked, the clearer it became that she was trying to convince herself.
Her eyes never left her lover’s face, but he could not meet her gaze. “Miles. Look at me.”
It took him a long moment before he could do as she ordered, and when he finally looked her fully in the face, she gave a moan of pain like a wounded animal. “I am sorry,” he whispered. “I never meant for this to happen.”
“Never meant—” Her eyes were wild as she looked from him to Johnson and back again. “You intended to leave me. Did you think to take our share, my share?” she demanded.
Miles raised his hands in protest. “No, no, of course not! I was going to leave you everything that was due you—and mine as well. I insisted to Seward upon it.”
“Then why—” she broke off in mystification.
“Because they are in love,” I said simply. “Is that not correct, Ruthven? Your book in the dressing room. It was an indifferent translation of The Iliad, not one any true scholar would choose. But it was marked at a particularly warm passage about the devotion of Achilles and Patroclus. True love.”
“No,” Asphodel said, shaking her head. “It cannot be.” But even as she said the words, I saw the dawning realisation on her face.
Misery stamped itself upon Miles’s features. “I am sorry, Asphodel. I know this comes as a blow to you.”
“A blow? No, a blow is a solitary thing. One can survive a blow. This is an annihilation,” she managed tightly. “How long have you been planning this?”
“Since before Maurice Quincey died,” Stoker put in. “That is why he had to die, wasn’t it? He discovered the plan for the two of you to run away together and had to be silenced.” I stared at him in astonishment.
“You knew they planned to leave together? How?”
“George,” he said simply. “I set him to do surveillance on Johnson, and he told me he’d seen him at the Belleville offices.
Belleville only does transatlantic crossings, so he had to be booking passage for America.
Before I could tell you, they called,” he said with a nod towards Asphodel and Ruthven.
“They sent a note claiming to be representatives of the Pinniped Society in need of my services for that cursed walrus.”
“And you believed them!” I protested.
“Of course I bloody well didn’t,” he said scornfully. “What sort of cotton-witted bumpkin do you take me for? It was obviously a trap. But I realised that if Johnson was planning to leave, I had no choice but to go with them in order to force a confrontation.”
“If we might—” Johnson put in.
“No, we may not!” I turned back to Stoker. “Have you no sense of self-preservation whatsoever? Of all of the moronic—”
“Enough!” Asphodel roared.
“Very well,” Stoker replied. “You want to return to the topic at hand. We were explaining how we realised these two planned to abandon you. Do you want more of the details?”
“Like how Jameson Harkness had to be warned in case Quincey, his best friend, had confided anything to him before his death,” I added. That much was a guess, but it was a good one. The arrow struck home.
The pair of murderous lovers looked abashed. No doubt they had never anticipated being held accountable for their crimes—or for their planned abandonment of Asphodel. Hegarty made a gesture of conciliation towards her, but she remained motionless, implacable.
“It all got so out of hand,” he said piteously.
“We were so careful and then Quincey, bloody Quincey, happened upon us. We had come so far already, we could not simply walk away. He wanted money for his silence, far more than we had. We promised him the Mortlake Jewel. But then Seward pointed out it would never be enough. Quincey would always come back until the well had been drained dry. We could not take the chance of living like that. So we made a plan to leave. But I insisted the jewel go to you, my dear girl. As a means of starting you off in your new life.”
Asphodel’s fingers went to the jewel at her throat. “This was always meant to be a gift of farewell?”
Miles held out his hands. “My darling, I am so sorry. But you will be happy again, I know it.”
She ignored him and moved towards Seward Johnson, removing the jewel from around her neck as she came near.
She placed it into his hands. “I do not want it,” she said evenly.
“I want nothing at all. Except revenge.” She whispered these last two words into his ear as she struck out suddenly with her fist. Johnson gave a little cry, and when she pulled away, we saw the blood pooling around the slender dagger in his throat.
“No!” Miles Hegarty gave a great cry of despair and leapt to catch Johnson as he fell.
Johnson gaped and gawped, his mouth moving though no sound issued forth.
He gripped Hegarty’s hand in his own, his gaze full of sorrow and something else.
Regret, perhaps? For the lives they had ruined, their own included.
Hegarty turned to us, desperate and despairing. “Help him, I beg you! Send for help!”
“He is beyond help,” Stoker told him gently. And even as he said it, Johnson’s eyes took on a faraway look, the light dying away as surely as the last star shutters itself at the dawn.
“But—” Hegarty looked back at his beloved, at the warm, spreading ruddy pool covering them both.
Suddenly, he rose to his feet with a roar of grief, arms outstretched, hands curled into claws.
“I will kill you!” He staggered towards Asphodel, but she snatched the jewel from the floor and grabbed the revolver that had slipped from Johnson’s grasp.
She raised it as she leapt backwards, as quickly as a scalded cat.
She scrambled up the stairs, keeping the revolver trained upon Hegarty, until she reached the top.
Without a backwards glance, she dropped the iron door down into place.
Then the quick scrape of the key in the lock, and it was done.
We were trapped with a dead murderer and his accomplice.
And it was a very long time until morning.