The Curse of Christmas (18 page)

Fedir peered above the prickles
and saw only one black shadow creeping toward them. That was
reassuring. At least they would not be outnumbered. The shadowy
figure paused by the headstone in the heart of the cemetery and
looked furtively about. It wasn’t the stranger in the top hat. That
was also reassuring.

Fedir had both hands on the
handle of the shovel now, ready to wield it with all his might. The
shadow crept closer to the unearthed grave. He was almost upon them
when the Countess cried out, “Dr Watson!”

The black shadow leapt back in
fright, lost his footing and hit the ground hard. “My God! You gave
me the fright of my life just now!”

“What are you doing here?”

“I felt guilty staying away.
Fedir told me you weren’t meeting until three o’clock. I went to
bed early and had enough kip. I couldn’t see anyone and was
wondering if you had gone home early or not bothered to come after
all.”

“We came,” she said sparingly
and solemnly. “Take a look at this.”

He cast his eyes over the bundle
of rags and even in the dim moonlight and murky gloom he could make
out a baby curled up in the foetal position. It could have been
sleeping but he knew it wasn’t. He blasphemed more than once then
stooped to study it with a critical doctor’s eye. “A girl,” he said
sadly. “Poor little mite. A life cut short, and not even a decent
funeral. Do you know where she came from?”

The Countess shook her head.

“We better put her back.”

Fedir kept watch while the
doctor began to re-wrap the baby and the Countess felt a lump come
to her throat.

Was Annie the mother of this
poor child? Is that why Joff and Crick placed it in the grave? Did
she die from the complications of childbirth and not consumption?
Did the orphan follow the mother to her grave? It was too dark to
see what colour hair the babe had, and it might not be red anyway,
but the Countess had a sudden urge to check the corpse.

She clawed back the hessian
around the head and her heart stopped mid-beat. Even in the dark
she could see that the hair framing the face was black and frizzled
and that the face was old and wrinkled.

“This isn’t the corpse of
Annie.” Her tone sounded tight and stressed.

“What? Are you sure?”

“Quite sure. Annie had red hair.
Someone swapped the body of the girl in the coffin in the church
for this body. I saw the corpse go into the grave. The swap could
only have happened prior to the funeral service. That points the
finger squarely at Reverend Paterson.”

“Or Deacon Throstle.”

“They both acted suspiciously
this afternoon. The reverend lied through his teeth and the deacon
was twitchy. I felt they were hiding something.”

“I spoke to Langdale Pike and he
broadly intimated that his scandalous article about the Prince
Regent being at the brothel came from an ecclesiastical source. I
presumed it was either the reverend or the deacon.”

“There’s definitely something
strange going on in that church. Reverend Paterson claimed he and
the deacon are in bed by ten, there is no candlelight in the church
after that time, he never goes down Redcross Way and he has never
seen the graffiti.”

Dr Watson tucked the pitiful
bundle of rags back under the head, secured the hessian over the
face of the corpse, and stepped back so that Fedir could complete
the cover up.

“What now? Confront the two
clerics or the grave-diggers?”

“Neither,” said the Countess,
adopting a husky whisper. “If we confront them our secret mission
may be compromised. There’s more happening here than we bargained
for. Where is the corpse of Annie? Where did the babe come from?
Who is the dead person in the grave? Are we looking at multiple
murders or a lucrative trade in dead bodies and secret burials at
the expense of Viscount Cazenove? Are the reverend and the deacon
in on it? What about that fetch? Could it be a decoy to scare
people off? Is the murder of Miss Quilligan related to what is
happening here or is it separate? By the way, Angelmaker refers to
Freddy Cazenove. He is a property developer looking at developing
the Angel Embankment. It was Agrippa who coined the term, implying
the poor who live in the slums on the embankment will be made
homeless and end up going to their Maker. Miss de Merville put me
onto it. It unnerved her quite a bit to see it. Freddy is
considering suing Agrippa for defamation.”

“I say, you don’t think Agrippa
could have painted that graffiti on the bricks?”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“I am loath to think badly of a
friend, but what if Miss Quilligan came through just as he was…and
he, and he…”

“And he murdered her?”

Dr Watson swallowed hard.
“Yes.”

“Well, she would have recognized
him, that’s for sure. You said she was a friend of his sister. But
she wasn’t just killed, she was butchered. Is Agrippa capable of
frenzied violence?”

“What is anyone capable of?”

“True, but what about the other
word: Anglemaker. What does that mean? If Agrippa wrote Angelmaker
he had to have written Anglemaker too. Whoever wrote the one, wrote
the other. The lower-case and upper-case lettering and the paint
are identical.”

Dr Watson breathed easier.
“Langdale Pike is a grammarian. He would never confuse his upper
and lower case letters.”

“Unless he deliberately wanted
to.”

Instead of eliminating suspects,
they seemed to be adding them.

“I say, you don’t suspect
Langdale Pike of setting this whole business up with that article
on Crossbones to discredit the heir to the throne by drawing
attention to the location of the brothel? He fairly frothed at the
mouth today when talking about murderous monarchs. He might even be
our blackmailer!”

She considered the proposition
and dismissed it. “My money is on Freddy.”

“Viscount Cazenove?”

“He is always hanging around
here, supposedly a concerned suffragist. He is a developer so he
might know about drains. He is physically the right height and
weight as our mystery man. And if anyone should want to ruin the
Prince Regent it would have to be someone well-connected. And
speaking of drains - let’s go.”

Dr Watson opened his mouth then
closed it again. There was no point arguing with a woman who had
made her mind up on a matter. And even less point when that woman
was the daughter of Sherlock Holmes.

There was not a soul about as
they stole out of the cemetery and followed the narrow footway to
the hidden undercroft. There, Fedir dropped his shovel and lighted
the two lanterns. The doctor took one, the manservant took the
other, and the Countess took out her muff pistol.

Rats scurried away from the
light, their tiny claws scratching the mouldy stones in their
desperation to flee into pockets of darkness, and the Countess
immediately thought of the crypt. If someone wanted to conceal a
corpse prior to swapping it that would be a perfect place to hide
it. The reverend guarded the place zealously – what did Freddy say?
– the bones of the Bishop of Winchester and the Holy Grail! He was
joking, of course, but perhaps there was something precious down
there after all? But why? Why? Why swap one corpse for another?

Questions required answers.

Facts had to fit theories.

Ugh! What was that? She climbed
down the ladder and stepped straight into a filthy puddle that
swamped her ankles.

“At least it’s not a sewer,”
said Dr Watson, holding his lantern aloft to study the furry,
phosphorescent, green, concave walls. “And all the rain we’ve had
recently has cleaned the drain out.”

Fedir, who was forging ahead
fearlessly, stopped suddenly. “Look here,” he said, indicating a
scrap of cloth caught on an iron hook set into the brickwork.

“Black velvet,” said Dr Watson,
pocketing the tell-tale fabric. “Our man definitely came this
way.”

They moved on and soon came to a
fork where several smaller drains merged into one larger one. The
sound of running water could be heard but it was impossible to tell
from what direction. The gradient seemed to be falling gradually,
probably to help the water flow into the Thames. There was no
telling how far the drain ran.

“Where now?” asked Fedir.

“Stick to the larger one,” said
the Countess, thinking about what might happen if they got lost or
it suddenly started to rain.

They felt a cold draught and
soon encountered another ladder and a manhole above their heads,
similar to the one they had descended.

“Check to see if the grid can be
moved,” she instructed.

Fedir scaled the ladder and
studied the opening. There was an iron hook to the side where he
could hang his lantern and free his hands. The grid was heavy. It
took all of his considerable strength to lift it and even more
strength to shift it sideways. He disappeared briefly and
everything fell quiet in the drain apart from the constant
drip-drip of water.

“I know where we are,” he said
when his head reappeared in the opening. “Come.”

They came out at Borough Market
yet they had not travelled more than two hundred yards. The drain
followed the diagonal of the train track eliminating the need to
follow the right-angled bends of the roads.

Fedir pointed out the number of
cigarette butts on the ground around the grid as he pushed it back
into place. Now, it might have been the market workers, several of
whom were already arriving for work, pushing wooden trolleys laden
with goods for sale, who shared a smoke under the shelter of the
viaduct, but it could also have been their mystery man.

Dr Watson inspected a couple of
the butts but the residual tobacco was too old to have retained any
particular smell. “They appear to be well-rolled. The paper looks
good quality. That’s all I can say.” He handed the butts to the
Countess, and she came to the same conclusion.

It was still a couple of hours
before first light but there was no more to be done tonight. As
they parted they wondered if they had actually achieved anything or
whether they were just getting more and more mired in
confusion.

Fedir was given instructions to
skip the usual midday meeting for tomorrow and to push Sukie for
more information.

Dr Watson was instructed to find
out the name of Langdale Pike’s sister.

The Countess felt it was time to
discover more about Miss Quilligan. She resolved to speak to Miss
Pike, Mrs Aspen, and Madame La Bonne on Primrose Hill.

But first, she intended to sleep
until noon.

Mrs Aspen was a widow who lived
on the first floor of a set of brown-brick flats overlooking the
Marshalsea Road.

The Countess arrived unannounced
with a caddy of Darjeeling tea tied with a silk ribbon. A housemaid
brewed a fresh pot while the two ladies sat down in the front
parlour and talked about the incident at the rally. Mrs Aspen had
spoken to the police and they were not looking for any suspects.
Their view was that she had personally instigated the fire cracker
attack in order to drum up sympathy for her cause. She was
outraged.

“I saw the man with my own
eyes!” she exclaimed indignantly. “Tossing fire crackers into the
crowd!”

The Countess sat forward. “You
saw him? Did you notice anything about him?”

“I shall never forget him! He
was dressed as a gentleman! Not a ruffian or a lout! That’s what
shocked me the most! He was wearing a top hat and a black cape. He
was pulling fire crackers out of his pockets one at a time,
lighting one before tossing it off and then lighting the next one
and so on continuously until he ran out. He started to run toward
Northumberland Avenue. I attempted to pursue him along with Miss
Quilligan but I fell down the steps, hit my head and broke my arm.
And now Miss Quilligan is dead. It is too awful. It will set us
back months. She was a tireless worker and so well-organised. I
will never be able to replace her.”

“Do you think Miss Quilligan got
a good look at the man?”

“Well, she was much closer than
I.”

“She didn’t say anything about
him before she was killed?”

“No, I didn’t see her after my
fall. It was chaos. Blood everywhere. I presumed she had gone home
to regain her strength. To wake the next morning and read about her
death was an even greater shock. I don’t think I shall recover for
some time. Wretched business! Simply wretched!”

They drank their tea and talked
about the importance of female enfranchisement. The Countess left
some money to help affray the medical expenses of the injured
women.

La Bonne Bonnets was situated on
Primrose Hill. Madame La Bonne remembered Miss Quilligan as a
serious, sensible young woman who organized everything in the shop
from incomings and outgoings to seasonal sales. Replacing her was
proving impossible. She had employed three girls since Miss
Quilligan’s departure and they had all fallen short of the mark.
She was currently trialling girl number four who could not subtract
numbers in her head and was woeful with customers.

The Countess purchased a dozen
winter bonnets, arranged for them to be delivered to Mayfair Mews,
and left.

Dr Watson had managed to come
good with the name and address of Miss Pike. She resided in a
basement flat on Westbourne Terrace in Paddington. She lived alone
and gave elocution lessons to girls who wished to better
themselves; girls who wished to step up from domestic service or
factory work into the retail trade. Jobs for women were opening up
but prejudice ran deep. Girls with a lisp, a stutter, or the wrong
vowel sound were frowned upon in shops and cafes. Prospects were
limited by poor articulation.

Miss Pike approved of the
Countess’s intonation and had difficulty picking her accent. “Oh,
yes, constant travelling from a young age would do it. Children
subconsciously mimic accents. I would never have guessed you to
have a Slavic background. My brother mentioned you are a consulting
detective working with Dr Watson and you want to talk about Miss
Quilligan. Is that right?”