The Affair of the Porcelain Dog (20 page)

"He went on for quite some time, so enraptured by the subject that he didn't see me reach into the pocket where I'd stashed my pistol. My hands were shaking so, Adler. It's a miracle they didn't shake the gun right out onto the floor. I'd never shot anyone. But the short time that I'd served with Edward Acton had shown him to be prudent to a fault. The carefree manner in which he went on to describe his most vile and unlawful experiments left no doubt that he did not intend for me to leave that room alive--a conclusion that was verified when the hammer of another pistol clicked into place behind my head."

Lazarus outstrips me handily in speed of thought and action. I'd have already been lying on the floor in a pool of my own brains at that point. But Lazarus ducked and whirled, and before the guard or Acton could register what was happening, he'd knocked the guard's pistol out of his hand and disappeared into the corridor.

Bullets ricocheted off the stone walls of the corridor as Lazarus fled. As he reached the door through which he had entered, he felt a hammer blow to his back. The impact pitched him forward through the door, where he lay, dazed for a moment, until the ring of footsteps in the corridor behind him brought him back to himself. He scrambled to his feet and ran headlong into the deafening wall of storm that had thundered down from the mountain while he and Acton had been debating wartime ethics, still clutching the pistol to his chest.

∗ ∗ ∗

"I cannot tell you how fortunate I was that night," Lazarus said. "A shepherd I had once treated found me before I perished from my wounds. His family hid me and nursed me back to health, after which I found my way to a distant regiment, gave a false name, and was invalided out forthwith."

It took a moment for the last bit to register, but when it did, I had to stifle a highly inappropriate snigger.

"Wait," I said. "Do you mean to tell me that for all these years, you, Timothy Lazarus, the most tediously law-abiding person in all of London, have been drawing a fraudulent pension?"

"Only the name is fraudulent," he said irritably. "My injuries are quite real. I'd have been receiving the same pension, had I gone back to my own unit and somehow avoided an accident of Acton's making."

"And how does Acton fit into this again?" I asked.

He sighed.

"Opium. While serving with the East India Company, Acton was working on medical-grade opium derivatives. He spent some time experimenting with varieties of poppy, trying to increase the concentration of alkaloids in the resin. Some people believe that Acton harvested and secretly distributed opium made from the new poppies, and that this was the cause of those deaths in 1870, and in Limehouse ten years later."

I looked up sharply. I'd last seen my mother in 1866, when she'd left me at the workhouse in Bethnal Green. Though I'd only a grainy photo in a crumbling newspaper clipping to back it up, I'd always suspected that she'd been among the 1870 victims.

"Nate mentioned something like that," I said. "The brothel owner provides it on credit to the young men in his employ."

"Mmm." Lazarus nodded. "The opium was what made me think of Acton. When you said that the brothel owner had been a surgeon in Afghanistan, it confirmed my suspicions. I believe that Edward Acton is the owner of the Fitzroy Street brothel, and that he's bringing those children, along with opium, from Afghanistan. But to make an accusation like that, I need more evidence."

"
You
need?" I asked.

Lazarus was a force to be reckoned with on many levels, but he'd been hiding from Acton for almost a decade. If he failed, at the very least, he'd find himself up on charges of desertion and fraud. He would certainly never practice medicine again. More likely, though, if Acton was as powerful and well connected as the personal physician of a decorated general would have to be, then Timothy Lazarus--or whatever his name was--would find himself at the bottom of the Thames before he could say "elapid venom." Lazarus was an irritant and a prig, but he didn't deserve that.

"You might as well ring the man's doorbell and say 'here I am,'" I said.

Lazarus exhaled heavily and ran his hands through his hair. When he looked up, his face was that of a much older man.

"You've no idea how stressful it is, living like this," he said. "Sitting up at night, wondering whether you might have said or done something to inadvertently give yourself away. Waking every morning, thinking that this might be the day that it all comes crashing down around you--"

"Then stop," I said. "Let St. Andrews take care of you. Why do you do
this
, anyway?" I demanded, gesturing around the inadequate surgery where Lazarus spent his days. "You live in the lap of luxury. You did your bit in the army, you've spent nine years in this shithole--"

"I built this shithole," he said quietly.

"So you've done your bit for humanity as well. There's no need to throw it all away. We know who Acton is, and we have Nate's documentation to show what he's done. I'll deliver it to Bow Street, and you'll never have to think about it again. Just walk away and leave the drunks and the whores to Pearl. Doesn't St. Andrews have a country house or something, where you could retire?"

"Retire?" He laughed, miserably at first. As his mind came to some hysterical realization to which I was not privy, misery turned to confusion, to glee, and laughter shook his entire body until his eyes were moist with mirth.

"Wait," he said. He dabbed at his face with his shirt sleeve. "You think that St. Andrews...and I..." He sniggered. "Oh, Adler, that's revolting."

"I always thought so," I said.

"Repugnant," he chortled. "Oh, the very thought of it."

"I suppose you're going to tell me that you're 'just friends,'" I said. Really, if this was the thanks I got for showing a little concern, it was little wonder the good doctor had to rent company from time to time.

"Well, yes. St. Andrews is a member of the Piccadilly set, to be sure, but our arrangement is purely professional. We met a year and a half ago. I needed an affordable set of rooms
sans
rats, and he needed someone to keep his cases organized. In that respect, I definitely earn my keep," he added.

"But surely, between his money and his connections, he could help you nonetheless."

"Not if he's breaking rocks at Pentonville because we failed to recover that blasted statue."

"Right," I muttered. "Bugger."

"But even if we didn't have the blackmailer to worry about..."

He began pacing again, stroking his chin thoughtfully. Behind me, I heard the front door of the clinic open and close. There was an exchange of voices, shuffling feet--the first casualties of the weekend trickling in.

"The truth is," Lazarus said, "I've wanted to clear my name for some time. But I could never find the courage to do it. One lie led to another, then another, until one day I looked around to find that Timothy Lazarus wasn't just an alias; he was me. I was him. Which is fine when you're spending your days among people that no one cares to know. But Adler, there's no birth record for Tim Lazarus. No baptism, no education. The less said of his military service, the better. Frankly, I never expected that particular lie to hold up as well as it did. But without any of these things to prove who he is, Adler, Timothy Lazarus cannot marry."

"Marry?" I blinked. "To a woman?"

"Elizabeth Campbell," he said. "Bess. She's American. The daughter of missionaries. Nurse Brand introduced us a year ago."

Of course.

The daughter of missionaries.

My thoughts flashed back to the scrubbed woman who had been in the waiting room when I'd left the clinic that day. She'd looked so out of place, and yet perfectly at ease.

It explained the lovesick look on Lazarus's face when Pearl announced his luncheon companion had arrived, when I'd searched the waiting room for St. Andrews that day and not found him. It explained the utter lack of sexual charge between Lazarus and St. Andrews inside the brougham. And yet...

A blush crept across his cheeks. He reached into his waistcoat and produced a folding metal tintype case a little smaller than the palm of his hand. He opened the case, and I immediately recognized the broad-featured brunette. She had an impish glint in her eye, and was unsuccessfully suppressing a smile. She was older than what I understood to be the desirable age for women--maybe twenty-eight or twenty-nine, and not classically pretty. Still, if she possessed in person a fraction of the warmth conveyed by her portrait, her charm would have been irresistible.

"She's beautiful," I said honestly.

"Yes, she is." He gave his lady-love one final look before reluctantly tucking the portrait back into his waistcoat pocket. "I don't expect you to understand."

But I did understand. Love is mysterious, unfathomable. It can bring the most unlikely people together. And it was plastered all over his face. Instinctively, I felt for the golden snake on my pinkie. As my fingers traced its curves and ridges I felt...as if I should be feeling something more.

"What's that?" Lazarus asked, nodding toward my hand.

"Nothing."

Before I could tug the ring off and bury it in my pocket, he was across the room. He lifted my hand to his face. His breath was hot against my knuckles.

"By God." He looked from the ring to me. "That looks like-- Is it? It couldn't be!"

"It's not Her Majesty's ring." I snatched my hand away. Really, even Goddard had some scruples. "Same design, better materials."

"Do you mind?" he asked.

Not waiting for an answer, he took my hand again, this time angling it into the light until the diamonds projected twin fields of stars onto the ceiling and walls of the surgery.

"Good Lord," he said. "They're real."

"Goddard told me it represents loyalty, fidelity, and eternity," I said.

"Did he now?"

"I just wish I was the only one to have worn it."

Part of me had been desperate to hash through the string of coincidences, misunderstandings, and just plain bad luck leading to my arrest. Lazarus's frown and the furrows of concern at the bridge of his nose were all the encouragement I needed. I sank down onto the stool and opened the floodgates, releasing a tide of nonsense involving genital irritation, perfidious butlers, disappearing predecessors and impossible Chubb locks. When I was finished, I looked up to find him leaning against the doorjamb, arms crossed over his chest, gazing thoughtfully down at me.

"Well," he said. "At least you don't have syphilis."

"I don't?"

It had been my morbid fear of the disease, coupled with the itch that had plagued my private parts, that had made Collins's tales about my predecessors seem so plausible. Had I not been terrified of how Goddard would respond when he learned I'd brought the French Disease to his bed, I'd never have gone out onto the front steps for a smoke.

And I wouldn't have locked myself out in a blind panic.

"Syphilis doesn't itch, for one thing," Lazarus said. "There are also distinct lesions. You don't have sores down there, do you?"

I shook my head.

"It could still be any number of things. Do you have any discharge from your--"

"No," I said.

"Painful urination?"

"No."

"My money would be on a fungus, then, perhaps a skin irritation. Is Goddard's laundress using a new soap? Or perhaps you're putting something different in your bath?"

"You mean besides carbolic?" I asked.

He chuckled.

"If it had been a parasite, carbolic would have taken care of it. The important thing is, from what you've said and from what I saw, we can rule out a venereal disease."

It's impossible to express the relief those seven simple words produced. I felt weightless, boneless, and in sudden danger of melting into a puddle of relief.

"Tim, I could kiss you."

He cleared his throat.

"Actually," he said, "While you were ranting about the manservant, I was developing a theory. Will you indulge me?"

I gestured for him to continue. He fixed his eyes on the brick wall on the other side of the window and paused dramatically, his square fingers steepled beneath his chin.

"The last time I saw you, you were so bedeviled by your little problem you could hardly stand still." He turned. "But today I've yet to see you so much as wiggle. When was the last time your nether regions troubled you?"

I thought for a moment. The last time I'd given the matter any thought at all had been on the way to the London Athletic Club. My encounter with Mrs. Wu had distracted me considerably, even more so Goddard's proposal. The itch had provided a minor annoyance while arguing with Collins in the kitchen. However, after fleeing York Street, I was too busy stumbling upon possible murder scenes and being arrested for gross indecency to worry about it overly. Looking back, I couldn't remember the last time I'd thought about the little matter between my legs.

"It was at least before I left York Street," I said.

"What were you wearing?"

I stood and flourished a hand at my robe and St. Andrews's coat still draped over the stool. Lazarus smiled triumphantly.