Beneath london, p.8
Beneath London, page 8
“You’re certain she could not have known?”
“She could not – not in the sense you mean. And yet she did know. That was the first of many such incidents. You’d be quite amazed.”
Through the window Alice saw a man appear in the Dutch door beside the mule; apparently he had come in through the front of the barn in the wagon. She recognized him just as Mother Laswell said, “It’s Bill,” and stood up out of her chair. Mother heaved a loud sigh and began to weep, perhaps with relief. “We’re all right now,” she said. “Bill’s home.”
Bill Kraken, betrothed to Mother Laswell and an old friend to the St. Ives family, was tall and lean, his skin worn like old leather, baked for years in the Australian sun on a sheep farm after he had been transported for smuggling, and hammered by being out in all weather during his time on the London streets selling pea-pods and sleeping rough. His hair seemed to be permanently laid over, as if there were a stiff wind blowing. He scratched the mule behind the ear and whispered something to it, and then he ducked through the rain and up onto the veranda, disappearing from view.
“I’ll just step into the kitchen and speak to Bill,” Alice said, moving toward the kitchen door. It would be better for her to bear the news in order to spare Mother Laswell, who was already in a sad taking. The boy who had been called a cauliflower head stood on a stool at the kitchen counter, expertly shelling walnuts on a stone slab, cracking them open with one whack of a hefty wooden rod and putting the perfect halves into a wide-mouthed, stoneware jar. The girls were nowhere to be seen.
The boy had apparently just said something to Kraken, who stood stock-still in his damp coat, his face both disturbed and baffled. “Is it true what the boy is going on about?” he asked Alice. “That’s why you’ve come along to the farm on such a day as this?”
“Yes, Bill,” she said.
“I know what’s what,” the boy said, breaking another walnut. He put the two halves into his mouth and chewed on them, holding the wooden rod up as if it were an illustration. “It’s Clara’s mum what’s dead, sir, like I said. I heard it from John Peters, who saw her with his own eyes this very morning, a-sitting there without a head at all. Someone had did for her.”
“Clap a stopper over it, Tommy,” Kraken told him. “Talk like that ain’t genteel.”
“It’s what I heard from John Peters, sir. It’s what he seen. It was him as told Constable Brooke.”
“And now you’ve told us, Tommy,” Alice said to the boy. “But Mr. Kraken is correct. Clara doesn’t want to hear any such coarse talk.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Tommy said.
“Then be off with you,” Kraken told him. “Take a heap of them nuts with you. Keep your gob stuffed with ’em till you learn how to speak like a Christian.”
“Yes, sir,” Tommy said, scooping up a handful from the open jar and shuffling out onto the veranda, where the girls were evidently playing.
Alice could hear a top strike the deck and then the clatter of pins being knocked down.
“Langdon and Hasbro have gone into the village to speak to Dr. Pullman,” she said.
Kraken nodded. “The Professor will see things right. But it’s too late for me to be of any use. There’s naught to do now that Sarah Wright’s dead. I shouldn’t have gone into Maidstone. I shouldn’t have gone off over a few sheep, ancient sheep, too – a fool’s errand. Look what come of it.”
“Nonsense, Bill,” Alice told him. “The crime quite likely occurred yesterday, in the middle of Boxley Woods, before you left for Maidstone. The lot of us were within half a mile of Sarah Wright’s cottage at the time. There’s nothing you nor anyone else could have done to prevent it.”
“Mayhaps,” he said. “Still and all…” He was silent for a moment and then said, “I’ll look in on Mother. She’ll have took it hard.”
Alice followed him into the parlor, wishing now that Langdon and Hasbro were still here, if only to lend a semblance of order to the chaos of murder and its aftermath.
Kraken put his arm around Mother Laswell’s shoulder, hugging her awkwardly. She clutched his hand and said, “I’m all right now you’ve come home, Bill.” Kraken sighed heavily, his sigh catching in his throat. Alice felt like an interloper, but reminded herself that her own emotions were trivial.
Needing very badly to be useful, she walked back into the kitchen and set about cracking walnuts, working proficiently and steadily, until the sound of a coach sent her to the window, relief flowing through her – Langdon and Hasbro, perhaps, returning more quickly than she could have hoped. But she was wrong. It was a black brougham with white flourishes painted on it and brass headlights, carrying two men, both of them wearing the uniform of the London Metropolitan Police.
One of the policemen was tall and dignified – an affection of dignity, perhaps – with a Roman nose, heavy eyebrows, and a wide mustache. The other, driving the horses, was heavy, short, and unfortunately ugly, his face having taken a beating on more than one occasion and his teeth snaggled. He had a snide, knowing look in his small, close-set eyes. His uniform fit him like a sausage casing and he wore a beard of sparse, straight bristles. The dark scowl on his face made him appear to be a hard man, but perhaps that wasn’t surprising, Alice thought, given his work.
“Bill!” Alice called, but he was already on his way, opening the door at the first knock and letting the men into the house, the shorter man carrying a leather valise.
“You must be Harriet Laswell, ma’am,” the taller of the two said to Alice. “Detective Shadwell of the Metropolitan Police and Sergeant Bingham, at your service.”
“I am Harriet Laswell, gentlemen,” Mother Laswell said, having come in from the parlor. “This is Alice St. Ives, our neighbor.”
“Ma’am,” Shadwell said, bowing in Alice’s direction and regarding her with particular attention.
Alice stood aside in order to allow Mother Laswell to pass. Then she moved back into the doorway. She was aware that Clara stood behind her, wanting to listen, perhaps, but not to be seen.
“We scarcely expected that the London police would take an interest in the case,” Mother Laswell said. “I assume you’ve come about the murder of Sarah Wright.”
“Yes, we have. London in fact takes a very deep interest in the woman’s murder, and in the wellbeing of her daughter, who lives here with you, if I’m not mistaken.”
“She does indeed, Detective. Have you consulted with Constable Brooke at all? We know very little of the circumstances of the crime.”
“Constable Brooke was very helpful in his small way, but I’m afraid that the implications in the case require the full attention of the Metropolitan Police. The local constabulary is at a sad loss to puzzle things out.”
“God help us,” Mother Laswell said. “Let me introduce Bill Kraken to you, Detective. Mr. Kraken and I are to be wed at Christmas. And I’ll point out that Alice’s husband is the illustrious Langdon St. Ives. Professor St. Ives is a highly regarded member of the Royal Society. You can speak freely in this company.”
“Indeed,” Detective Shadwell said, nodding at Bill Kraken and bowing to Alice again. “We won’t consume much of your time. If you could instruct the girl Clara to pack a bag while we talk, we’ll consume even less of it. We must return post haste to London with the girl in our custody.”
* * *
St. Ives and Hasbro traveled beneath swiftly moving clouds, the rain having diminished to a spewy irritation rather than a proper downpour. Hasbro turned up Farthing Lane to the icehouse at the end, a wooden structure with ‘Cromie’s Wenham Ice’ painted on the boards above a depiction of a sweating ice block clamped in a pair of tongs. A wagon stood outside the open door, where two men loaded blocks of ice onto the bed, one heaving the blocks and the other, aboard the wagon, tossing straw onto the ice and packing it in. St. Ives and Hasbro found Mr. Cromie, a hearty-looking old man, in his office, his foot in a pail of hot water.
“It’s the gout,” Cromie said to them. “The change of the weather does it. Every time. Sets it off like a squib. There’s nothing for it but a hot soak and the doing of as little as possible, a sport at which I excel. Only complication is that I can’t quit and rest.” He burst into laughter, a loud “Ha ha!”, the violence of it jolting his leg. He recoiled in pain and his face drained of color. “I’m a danger to myself, gentlemen,” he wheezed. “What can I help you with? Building an Eskimo hut, perhaps?”
“Something much simpler, Mr. Cromie,” St. Ives said. “My name is Langdon St. Ives, and this is my particular friend Hasbro. My wife and I have recently occupied the house and grounds owned by the late Agatha Walton, my wife’s aunt.”
“Have you now? A game old woman, Miss Walton. I was sorry when she passed away. I can see that you haven’t come to Mr. Cromie’s icehouse accompanied by your friend with a singular name merely to purchase ice. Why have you come?”
“Can you tell us whether a man, or two men, stopped in yesterday, midday or thereabouts, to purchase ice?” St. Ives asked. “Probably strangers in these parts.”
“Indeed they did not, sir, neither one of them nor two. There were three of them, in point of fact. Why do you ask?”
“Constable Brooke is interested in them – three, do you say?”
“That’s right, a rum cove in a yellow coat, what they call a seaside coat these days. A bruiser, I said to myself. Face hammered in the ring. He stayed in the wagon, so I didn’t get a look at him except through the window. There were two who came in to purchase a small quantity of ice. One of them was a gent from the cut of his jib. Fringe beard, well dressed. Newmarket coat despite the weather. Pair of spectacles with a heavy black frame. Hair to his shoulders. Foreign cove, I said to myself, Mediterranean, mayhaps, and I found I was correct when he spoke. ‘I want eese,’ says he. I knew what he meant, of course, but I made him say it three times as a lark. Didn’t like him. Not a bit. Pretentious as an owl. The other was an average-sized man, looked to be a swell. The foreigner called him ‘doctor’ once, and the fellow didn’t like it a bit. Dark hair. Blue eyes with a scar directly beneath the left – a close call, no doubt. A great one with the women, I should think. Scotchman, says I to myself, but with most of the burr civilized out of him.”
“Can you guess the age of either of them?” Hasbro asked.
“Forty-odd for the foreign cove, thirty-odd for the other, although mayhaps older for him as well. Boyish face with those blue eyes. The foreign cove ordered the ice.”
“Anything odd about the purchase?” Hasbro asked.
“Odd, do you say? Well, sir. Odd enough, I suppose. He packed a box with ice, chiseled to fit just so. Size of a large hatbox, wood, but tinned inside. Smaller box inside that, tinned. Paid us to chip out the slabs, do you see? They must fit tight, he says to us, all the way around. Off they went, direction of Wrotham Heath when they got to the end of the lane, London bound, perhaps.”
“Were you curious about the purchase?” Hasbro asked. “Strange business wasn’t it – these tinned boxes?”
“Not a bit curious, truth to tell. I mind my business. Not like some gents I could name, who mind Mr. Cromie’s business as well as their own. Enlighten me, if you will. What the devil does the Constable care about men buying ice?”
“Perhaps nothing,” St. Ives said.
“And yet he sent you two to Cromie’s icehouse to carry out an inquisition? Thumbscrews in your pocket, I dare say? Stretch poor Mr. Cromie on the rack?”
“Not a bit of it,” St. Ives said. “It’s a simple business. A grave was robbed at Boxley Abbey, but the corpse would scarcely fit into a hatbox, even a large one. We’ve come on a fool’s errand, it seems. Thank you for your time, Mr. Cromie.”
Mr. Cromie looked at them blankly for a moment and then shrugged, apparently satisfied with the explanation. Hasbro did him the favor of refreshing his hot water bucket from a large kettle swathed in an over-sized tea cozy, and they left him soaking. Outside, the ice wagon was gone, the world empty of people.
They turned up the lane, back into Aylesford proper, bound for Hereafter Farm. St. Ives thought hard about what he would tell Mother Laswell – how he would tell it, which he had to do. There was nothing in any of it that would ease her fears.
* * *
“Pack a bag?” Kraken asked Detective Shadwell. “You ain’t thinking of taking Clara to London town?”
Sergeant Bingham helped himself to a pair of walnuts, cracking them easily in his hand and eating the pieces, not saying a word, although the smirk on his face was evident to Alice. Kraken was livid with rage and surprise, and she was happy that he stood behind Bingham, out of sight, and hadn’t noticed the trespass with the walnuts. None of them needed more trouble than they already had.
“We’re not thinking of doing anything, my man,” Detective Shadwell said to him. “We have orders to take the girl into custody for her own safety. She’s in mortal danger. We’ve been led to believe that she’s a savant, touched by the hand of God, if you will, and there are those that would make use of her.”
“Who told you such a thing, sir?” asked Mother Laswell.
“Your own Constable Brooke and the girl’s father, ma’am. We’re tolerably certain that Mrs. Wright’s murder was due to her… calling, which the girl shares.”
“Her father? Clemson Wright? That husk of a man? What business does he have saying anything at all about Clara? To the best of my knowledge he hasn’t seen the girl since he was driven away many years ago, nor has Clara seen him. He’s a viper, sir. An eater of dung.” Mother Laswell had drawn herself up as if ready to explode. Alice took her arm to quiet her, or to hold her back if necessary.
“I fully believe you ma’am,” the detective said, “but be that as it may, he is the girl’s father. He has certain rights under the law, and the law is indifferent to his character unless he runs afoul of the law, which he has not.”
Alice saw that Kraken had picked up the heavy piece of wooden rod from the kitchen counter and was gripping it hard, his face set. Neither of the two policemen were paying any attention to him at the moment, thank God. Alice stared meaningfully at Bill, and when she caught his eye, he looked abashed. Kraken’s transportation to Australia had ended when he stowed away on a ship returning to England. He had managed to leave the ship on its way up the Thames, hiding himself in the Thames Marshes where he found employment tending sheep, until by chance he fell in with Harriet Laswell, and his life was on an even keel again after many years of rough seas. He could scarcely afford to be taken up for striking a policeman or for anything else, not unless he wanted to be hanged. He laid the rod back in its place now, but the unhappy state of his mind was clear to Alice.
“The girl is safe at Hereafter Farm, sir,” Mother Laswell said, “safer than she is with the likes of Clemson Wright.”
“I regret to say, ma’am, once again, that I am under orders. Miss Wright’s father has laid claim to her for the sole purpose of protecting her. I’ll reveal that several days ago he was approached by a man who offered to purchase the girl.”
“Purchase her?” Mother Laswell said. “As if she were a slave?”
“Just so, and for a considerable sum. Wright was incensed, of course, by the very idea of it, as are all of us. He dismissed the man with hard words, but it started him thinking about his daughter, and about his duty to her. This very morning that same man came to him again in Thwaites’s Coffee House, and told him that Sarah Wright was dead, and that he should think hard about the girl, who was not dead. Once again he offered money, but it amounted to three pennies, which he dropped into the cup out of which Wright was drinking his coffee. It was clearly a threat, do you see. If money would not move Clemson Wright, then there were surer means.
“Wright understood them to be deadly serious, and he asked the man for a day to consider how to accomplish the task, for he knew that the girl Clara would likely spurn him, and he needed time to puzzle out what to do. The man agreed. Clemson Wright came straight to us, in fear for his own life and the life of his daughter. Fortune, however, was with us. Constable Brooke had just ten minutes earlier reported the murder of Sarah Wright by telegraph. Sergeant Bingham and I were in the coach bound for Aylesford as soon as the story was out of Wright’s mouth.”
“And we mean to be back in London by supper time,” Sergeant Bingham put in. “You lot can take that to the bank. Stand aside now and let us do our job and there won’t be trouble.” He picked up his valise at that point, opened it, and blithely removed a straight-jacket. “We’ve heard that the girl is given to fits.”
Detective Shadwell shrugged. “It’s unfortunate,” he said, looking straight at Kraken now as if taking particular notice of his face, which was petrified with fury. “Sergeant Bingham is anxious to do his duty, once he knows what it is. He’s tenacious in that regard.”
“The girl ain’t in no condition to do nowt,” Kraken said. “What I say is that you two servants of the people fetch Constable Brooke and bring him back along to Hereafter. We’ll wait for him and for the Professor, too, who is right now looking into this business out at Dr. Pullman’s. Professor St. Ives will get to the bottom of it quick enough – see if he don’t. There ain’t no tearing hurry. Not now there ain’t. The girl won’t be murdered while Bill Kraken is with her. And god-damn your supper,” he said to Sergeant Bingham. “Them chin whiskers look like they was shaved off the arse end of a Berkshire hog. Put that damned filthy garment back in that there bag or by God I’ll hang you with it.”
