The Aylesford Skull (11 page)

He heard the jingling of a horse’s bell then, certainly out on the road, and the figure dimmed and disappeared along with the whispering. Finn was happy enough to see it go. Curious, he walked a few steps forward, wondering whether someone was out at night searching for the ghost and how they meant to catch it. He had seen a device once, a mirrored box that was baited with sweets as an attractant – Allsorts, being a favorite among ghosts. Once the ghost entered the box, the mirrors would keep it trapped.

There was the sound of the bell again, quite nearby, but it stopped short this time, someone having silenced it. He took another step forward, hesitant to be seen. There it stood – a wagon, a man sitting in it, dressed in black, the horse also black, so that the wagon and the man and horse and all the trappings were nearly invisible against the darkness of the trees behind them.

The man saw him and nodded by way of greeting. “Come here, boy,” he said in a low voice, gesturing Finn forward with the buggy whip. “Step out into the moonlight so that I can have a look at you.”

Finn stood where he was, preferring the shadows. He could sense that the dead boy was still nearby, perhaps already in the possession of the dark man, who, Finn could see, had a distinct hunch on his back, although his cape and the darkness had hidden before now.

“I’m in a quandary,” the man told him. “I’m looking for the London Road, quickest route. I fear I’ve lost my way in the darkness. I’m not too far out, I hope.”

“No sir,” Finn said, “not too far. There’s a turning half a mile ahead that will take you into Wrotham Heath, and then it’s the right fork and all the way into Greenwich. There’s a coach inn at Wrotham Heath, sir, the Queen’s Rest, which you might be wanting if you’re looking for a room. It’s a tolerable long shift into London starting as late as this.”

It occurred to Finn that there was something off about the man, something bent, perhaps sinister, although it might be the lateness of the hour and the strange quiet that had swallowed the night. He heartily wished that he had stayed indoors with Hodge.

“A long shift is it? I’ll take your word on that. You seem to be a likely lad, answering so quick. I’ll pay you a sovereign to see me to the inn, so that I don’t miss the turning. You can sup there and be home well before dawn if you’re not slow-footed. What do you say to that?”

“I say that I cannot, your honor.”

“And why not?”

Because you have the face of Beelzebub
, Finn thought, although he said nothing.

“Two sovereigns, then.”

“No, sir, I cannot.”

“Two sovereigns ain’t enough for a lad like you, is it? Three then, and that’s my best offer.”

The offer was excessive. The man didn’t want his help. He wanted something else, although God knew what. Did Finn know this man? There was something about him, in his features – something aside from his fell presence and the hump on his back. If the moon were a trifle brighter, perhaps it would come to him. He was certain he’d seen him, in London perhaps, along the docks.

“I’m wanted up at the house just now, sir. You can’t miss the turning at Wrotham, though. The sign says ‘Greenwich’ clear enough.”

The man gave him an ill look, as if he would just as soon run him over on the road. Then his face cleared abruptly and he said, “Then I’ll be on my way, boy.” With that he snapped the reins and the horse cantered away, the wagon fading almost at once into the darkness.

“God between us and all harm,” Finn said aloud, crossing himself, and turned away. The ghostly presence had departed with the wagon, and the night birds took up their note in the trees and the crickets in the shrubbery. It came into his mind that he should speak to the Professor. It was tolerably doubtful that the man in the wagon had been idling on the road, contemplating the route to London – black mischief, more likely. As he walked back toward the cottage, however, he saw that the lower rooms of the house were dark, and only a solitary lamp burned upstairs in what was the Professor and Alice’s bedchamber. He pushed open the door to his cottage and found that Hodge was asleep on his bed and the shortcake reduced to crumbs.

NINE

A LANE TO THE LAND OF THE DEAD

M
other Laswell looked slightly abashed, as if she had overreached herself. She turned the magic mirror on its base, the polished surface reflecting the candlelight. “I beg your forgiveness,” she said. “I don’t mean to speak slightingly of you.”

“I find your words wholly complimentary,” St. Ives said. “And perhaps no man can know himself entirely. Pray continue. Leave nothing out.”

“Aye,” Kraken said. “Speak your heart.”

“I’m nearly through it, Professor, and just as well. I don’t relish calling it up. It fell out that they took my Edward’s body to the laboratory, where my husband... where my husband removed the head. It was then, or so I speculate, that he had Narbondo drag the corpse to the river to dispose of it, leaving the bloody knife as a piece of false evidence. Narbondo, clever boy that he was, disposed of the body in his own way. He wanted a corpse of his own to work on, you see, and the cost of a body as fresh as Edward’s was too dear. He hid Edward’s corpse in a garden shed and locked the door, visiting his brother in his spare moments thereafter, learning what he could of human anatomy. In the weeks that followed the murder, with Narbondo as a pupil, my husband fabricated a lamp from Edward’s skull – the sort that John Mason had been at work on, but hadn’t sufficient skill to contrive. My husband had taken photographs of Edward some time back. His aversion to sentimentality made me wonder at his motives at the time. He always had a motive, you see. He did nothing but with an eye toward gain.

“I became increasingly certain that he and his acolyte were responsible for Edward’s death, and one afternoon, when I could stand it no longer, I made my way to the laboratory and surprised him at his work. It sounds insane for me to say that I knew my own son’s skull when I saw it sitting atop a copper-sheathed table, but I
did
know it. It was no longer a mere skull, for he had completed his work upon it, to my horror. Beside it lay a notebook written out in my husband’s clear hand. He had kept a record of his experimentations, as if he had been dissecting a cat.

“I confronted him with the murder, and he was quite bold in telling me to look to my own progeny if I needed a party to blame. The deformity, he told me, was in my own seed. I knew then that Edward had been murdered by his brother. My husband wasn’t a timid man. He would happily have admitted to the crime if he had committed it. I gestured at Edward’s skull, turned into God knew what. ‘You would use him this way?’ I asked my husband. ‘Your own son?’ ‘He’s no longer my son,’ my husband said to me. ‘He’s dead. A mere corpse. And as for
using
him, my intention is to compel his ghost to remain among the living. You can thank me for that, for I believe that I’ve succeeded. I can summon him for you, if you’d like.’

“I was suddenly quite certain that he meant to murder me into the bargain, and I determined to impede his efforts now, since I had been dead in spirit for a very long time, and at that moment actual death seemed far more reasonable than life. I picked up a heavy glass cube with both hands and smashed it down onto my husband’s head when he foolishly turned away, knocking him to the ground. And there he stayed, perhaps dead, although I scarcely believed it at the time. I snatched up Edward’s skull and looked about for a place to hide it, because I meant to take it with me if I won free. It was a thing of horror, but it was all that was left to me. There was no place, however, that was safe, and so I pitched that glass cube through the window and the skull after it, watching as it rolled into the greenery on the banks of the little stream that runs down along the top of the farm. Then I snatched up the notebook and slipped it beneath my bodice. I began to smash things generally, then, caught up in a growing rage for what my husband had done, and in the smashing I knocked over a lamp, which cast burning oil on a heap of crates and papers and set the place alight. Good, I thought. I’ll burn him to death.

“But luck wasn’t with me. My husband staggered to his feet just then, not knowing whether to murder me or attend to the blaze, which had spread to the curtains. The old wooden boards in the wall caught fire, and the smoke drove us both out into the open air, my husband just then realizing that the skull had vanished from the tabletop. But he was scarcely in a position to mention it, for coming along toward us at a run was a group of men from the village, some of them carrying weapons. Among them was my own disgraced son. Aylesford still had a watchman in those days, and Narbondo had summoned him, having revealed that his own father was a vivisectionist and had murdered his brother Edward. The boy was clearly surprised to see me there, and watched in something like dismay as the laboratory burned. I knew what he regretted, and I was happy in my way for having deprived him of it, and for seeing the loss in his face. He had let his father complete his detestable work and then had betrayed him, intent upon taking the skull himself. Now it was lost to both of them.

“They dragged my husband away, and what they found beneath the charred floor of the laboratory was sufficient to hang him. At the trial Mary Eastman swore, no doubt at Narbondo’s insistence and to her own undying shame, that she had seen my husband murder Edward, and so his fate was doubly sealed. There was no blame cast at me. I had long been considered an object of pity thereabouts, and when it was known that I had beaten my husband and set the laboratory alight, I was very nearly a heroine.

“Soon after, Narbondo disappeared from Aylesford and didn’t return, there being nothing left for him here. He needed a larger stage on which to work his mischief. I’m aware that he searched for the skull in the ashes of the laboratory, knowing that several skulls had been found, each in a different state of ornamentation and blackened in the fire. I believe now that he suspected that I had it, but he never once accused me of it. Perhaps he was afraid of Mary Eastman, fearing that she would step forward if I came to harm at Narbondo’s hand. He found my husband’s notebook, however, and took it, although by then I had read it many times, and I knew the secret of Edward’s skull, which I had retrieved from where it lay hidden along the stream. I buried my son’s bones in the churchyard when they were discovered in that locked shed, but the skull I kept in my possession for thirty long years. I communed with Edward’s spirit many, many times, Professor.”

She fell silent then and St. Ives realized that she was weeping. Kraken put his hand on her arm, and she covered his hand with her own.

“Communed with his spirit?” St. Ives asked after an interval. “Do you mean literally?”

“Quite so,” she said. “On nights when the fog rose off the fields I projected his...
features
, if you will, on the mists, and he appeared as he had been, as a boy, and with a semblance of life, or at least movement. He knew I was nearby, although I’m certain he couldn’t see me, not in the sense that I can see you sitting before me now. He couldn’t speak, of course, but his face betrayed his anguish, and I was haunted by the fear that I promoted his anguish each time I called him forth. There was a depravity on my part, too, which I very well knew. I resorted to laudanum in an effort to restore my sanity, but the drug magnified my longing, and soon I had two vices rather than just the one. Endeavoring to keep the dead alive is to murder oneself slowly, do you see? I knew I had to bury my Edward, and with William’s help I finally did.”

Kraken sat staring at the tabletop now, nodding silently. “Nearly a year ago, it was, sir – mid-July. We paid a visit to the churchyard, and with the sexton’s help, we laid him to rest in his coffin.”

“And now Narbondo has recovered it,” St. Ives said. “He had only to murder Mary Eastman to complete his work.”

Kraken stirred in his chair and cleared his throat. “Or to begin it, sir.” And then to Mother Laswell he said, “The door, Mother. Tell the Professor about the door. It’s the door, sir, that we’re up against now.”

She nodded, considered for a moment, and said, “It’s here that we’ll come a cropper, Professor. I don’t ask you to believe what I’m about to reveal, but you must know that
I
believe it. My late husband had no interest in his son’s ghost for its own sake. As was ever his way, he meant to make use of it. Spirits are misplaced in the world of the living. They long to move on, but for reasons beyond our ken, they sometimes do not. To put it into the simplest terms, John Mason had attempted to contrive a means to open a lane to the land of the dead, through which a ghost might pass on, and through which a man might follow, and might return through it again.