Chapter 32
Chapter
In the end, we did not gather that night to discuss the case.
Stoker was still suffering the effects of his drugging, and the rest of us were feeling the various aches and bruises that were the mementoes of our adventure.
We parted at Bishop’s Folly, George to sleep in the stable block, Mornaday to his lodgings with a promise to return the next day, Stoker to his temple, J.
J. to her Bavarian folly—now free of pests—and I to my little chapel.
Vespertine joined me, and I left him slumbering on the tiny sofa as I moved behind the screen to wash and change out of my hunting costume.
It was streaked with mud and assorted other substances, so I left it in a heap to be attended by the maids and wrapped myself in a dressing gown of velvet patchwork, shaking out my hair and giving a sigh of relief that all had come out well in the end.
“Are you quite finished?” came a voice from the other side of the screen. “Only I have a train to catch shortly.”
I stepped out to find Asphodel, sitting on the sofa, Vespertine tucked comfortably alongside.
“Forgive me,” I said evenly. “I did not realise you were waiting. Would you care for a drink?”
“Whisky,” she said. I poured a glass for each of us and poked up the fire. She watched me closely as I moved.
“You seem remarkably poised,” she observed. “And not at all shocked that I have come.”
“I would put it at mildly surprised,” I admitted. “I thought it a possibility, but if I had regarded it as probable, I would have sent out for sandwiches.”
To my surprise she laughed, a warm, rich sound. I said nothing more. She had come to me, and it was for her to start the conversation. Instead, I held my silence, sipping the whisky and listening to the soft crackle of the fire.
She rolled the glass between her palms, studying the play of light in the amber depths of the liquor.
“I believe that sometime soon—a day or two at most—I will think of what has happened in these last few hours and I will become inconsolable, hysterical even. But for now, I can speak calmly. And I would like to talk about it.”
“You believe I am the proper audience for your confession?”
“Confession! Well, they do say it is good for the soul. And to whom else shall I unburden myself, hm? You have wrecked my life, picked it up and shaken it to pieces, and now I think it only fair that you hear the truth of it.”
“Very well,” I said, settling myself more comfortably. “Go on.”
She grinned bitterly. “Do not think of it as a confession. Think of it as a cautionary tale. You believe you would have been cleverer, in my position. I know you do. But it happened by inches, not all at once. And you can learn to tolerate anything if it creeps up slowly. That’s what Johnson was—a slow, creeping thing that stole the love of my life from me. ”
She sat back, one hand stroking Vespertine.
I made a note to have a stern discussion with that dog about loyalty, but he seemed to give her some comfort, for she kept a steady pace, petting him as she talked.
“We were down to our last few shillings when we met Johnson. I say ‘we’ but it was Miles who met him first. It was in a dreadful, grubby little gin palace in Whitechapel. I was reading palms for ha’pennies, and Miles was nursing a glass of blue ruin.
We had always talked of going abroad, trying our luck elsewhere, but we could never quite manage to scrape together the fare. ”
“Miles was a tutor,” I said quietly. “Had he left his profession?”
She nodded. “He used to try his little tricks on his pupils—a bit of mesmerism, nothing serious. He would make the boys take things for him, as a lark, he told them. But then he would sell them on and pocket the proceeds. It worked, after a fashion. Because Miles himself never stole anything, he was not caught in the act of pilfering. The only true risk was in selling property that did not belong to him. So he only asked for small trinkets and modest sums of money. It brought him a little extra brass, but nothing much.”
“You cannot make a person behave contrary to their own character under hypnosis,” I replied.
Asphodel’s smile was small and sour. “You have correctly identified the flaw in Miles’s little schemes.
The lads who were not averse to a bit of thieving would bring him the odd pound note from their fathers’ notecases or a bit of pretty china he could pawn.
But occasionally he met with a boy who refused.
He was always able to pass it off as a joke, but in his last post, the child told him no and reported Miles to his father.
He was turned out the same night. Without references. ”
“And a tutor without references—”
“Might as well be a dustman,” she finished. “No one wants a person of dubious character shaping young minds.”
“For good reason,” I murmured.
She waved an airy hand. “It was a bit of petty theft.”
We would not see eye to eye upon the matter, meaning there was little point in pursuing that path. “So, you were at a low ebb when you met Johnson,” I prompted.
She nodded. “Do you know, of all the things that are curious about this business, all the questions I have that will never be answered, the one that puzzles me the most is why Horace Von Hilsing’s private secretary went all the way to Whitechapel for a glass of cheap gin.
I never asked why he was there that night, but I can tell you, when I walked over to where he was sitting with Miles, he turned and looked at me and I felt it. ”
“It?”
“The shiversome feeling when someone walks over your grave. Fate had a hand in that night, I am certain of it. Johnson and Miles had arranged to meet again, and I tried to put an end to it. I told Miles I didn’t like him, thought he was too lofty for the likes of us, but that wasn’t why.
I’d seen his palm, you see. And I knew he meant death for us. ”
She fell silent for a long moment, her hand still moving along Vespertine’s fur, as slow and steady as a metronome.
When she resumed her narrative, her voice was quieter, huskier.
“But Miles would hear nothing against him. He liked Johnson. It was the air of poshness about him. Miles and I both grew up poor, you see. Oh, his poverty was the genteel sort—a father with a head for stories and lungs thick with consumption. My parents were third-rate players in the most broke-down theatres in the provinces. They taught me how to get by on my wits and with a bit of showmanship. But where I learnt to despise my ‘betters,’ ” —her mouth twisted on the word—“Miles could never quite get past being awed by them. The bits and bobs he stole were to get something of his own back, but he could never bring himself to really commit to the part. He could have taken far more off them if he had tried.”
She looked ruefully into her glass. “One good sip left. But I won’t trouble you for more. I would enjoy a little oblivion, but I’ve business to attend to tonight, and I need a clear head.” She peered up at me with a furrowed brow. “Where was I?”
“You and Miles had just met Johnson. You were unimpressed.”
Her laugh was the short, sharp bark of a fox.
“ ‘Unimpressed’! Oh, you do have a droll wit, Miss Speedwell. I will grant you that. ‘Unimpressed’ indeed. I knew he was a devil, but he hid it so well behind those pleasant manners and that mouth that wouldn’t melt butter.
It wasn’t long before Miles told him about his little japes with the boys—the tricks of mesmerism and so on.
And it was Johnson who suggested how he could make the whole thing bigger, bigger than he had ever dreamed. ”
“The Harpocrates Society,” I said.
She pointed to me and winked. “Got it in one, my clever girl. Johnson saw at once that Miles’s tricks could be used on a much grander scale. He explained it with one word—‘Archimedes.’ ”
I puzzled over this for a second, then snapped my fingers. “Of course! ‘Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall rule the world.’ You needed only a bit of information to serve as a lever, and you could make anyone dance to your tune.”
“Precisely. Miles had told Johnson about how he had persuaded a few of the more gullible lads at one of his schools that he was a vampire. He thought Johnson would have a good laugh, but I saw the gears turning. If any of us were not human, it was Johnson. If you were to split him open, you’d find nothing but mechanics and crankshafts inside.
Anyway, he told Miles that assuming the identity of a mysterious vampire was just the thing to set the society apart.
Rich people, exclusive people, they want something more than money.
They want power, and there is no greater power than to thwart death.
We began by hinting at mysteries and rituals and matters beyond their ken.
Miles told them that we had known one another for centuries, and they believed.
They believed because they wanted to believe. ”
“And possibly because you dosed their tea?” I suggested politely.