The Devil's Ribbon (27 page)

Grey’s voice – ‘Cat got your tongue? Who was the damn doctor?’

Roumande tore a page from the logbook and shoved it at Hatton – ‘His name is clear and there’s no mistake, Adolphus, because his signature’s a hand we see quarterly. His obsession is infectious diseases – smallpox, typhus, cholera …’

Hatton knew at once, as he read, ‘“
Fit to Travel – signed by the portside physician – Dr Algernon Buchanan
.”’

‘Buchanan is next …’ Hatton said the words plainly but inside he reeled. The sick bowl? The retching? There must have been grains of arsenic or some other kind of poison in the vomit, but he’d missed it, so intent was he on helping the man. ‘I thought it was food poisoning.’

Grey grabbed the logbook. ‘What the devil are you two talking about?’

‘We need to go. We need to go, right now.’

‘Wait.’ Roumande wrestled the logbook back. ‘Good job you’re wearing your lavender gloves, Inspector. Daylight’s better for my purposes, and if
The Liberty
is at the heart of things, then maybe … just maybe … one hard piece of forensic evidence … what do you think, Adolphus? Is there time to spare?’

‘Do it,’ said Hatton, because one piece of forensic evidence would be enough to tell him for sure what was becoming horribly clear. The terrible stomach cramps, the vomiting, the clammy skin, the man’s sore throat. It wasn’t the salmon that caused poor Dr Buchanan’s illness last night. And that speech of his –

‘
It covers all my most groundbreaking moments, from the very early days, as a younger man sleeves rolled up and investigating typhus along the coast, to my latest and most important crusade, which as you know is the smallpox inoculation programme for workhouse children
.’

The coast? The coasts of England were fair-weather places, where patients were sent to recover their health, but the beaches of Ireland must have been another place entirely. Littered with the dying.

‘I believe Dr Buchanan worked in Ireland, along the coast in Donegal. Perhaps he knew Gabriel McCarthy and the others and was part of this works committee. And the key to that picture at the mill wasn’t the land, Inspector. It was
the sea
… always, the sea. The ship on the signet ring, this logbook, a wreck on an island, four hundred and twenty passengers signed fit to travel? Hecker’s vessels were used for emigration, but did they go willingly? And what happened on the ship?
The Liberty
? Did it even reach Canada? And somebody gave him
a duck, Inspector. A Canadian duck … a wigeon, of all things … an anonymous gift, from a grateful patient, he said …’

The inspector was incredulous. ‘That wretched duck? Last seen quacking in the hospital fountain? What on earth has that poor creature got to do with any of this?’

Well, wasn’t it obvious,
thought Hatton, but he only said, ‘Quack. Somebody’s calling London’s leading physician a quack. A liar, a swindler, a fraud, a fake. He must have been there on the beaches in Donegal when the ships sailed. He signed a paper saying over four hundred men, women, and children were fit to travel, but what if they were nothing of the kind? They must have been sick, malnourished, covered in lice, dying already, then crammed in the hold, like animals.’

The inspector lit a cigarillo. ‘Like a fucking slave ship, Hatton.’

‘We need to find out what happened to
The Liberty
. Thirty pieces of silver? The gombeen betrayed those people, but how? I need to find Buchanan, if he’s still alive, and ask him.’

Roumande was still on deck above them, as Grey spoke. ‘Some of the ships that sailed to America were nicknamed “coffin ships”. I never thought much of it at the time. Just the Irish up to their blarney again, I thought, with ridiculous stories about how they were dying on them.’

‘Coffin ships? These people didn’t go willingly,
did they
, Inspector? Are the Fenians right? Were these people forced from the land and sent to their deaths, knowingly? Was the government involved in trying to wipe out a race, just like the article says it was? Is that why these men were punished? A country-wide attempt to rid Ireland of its own people, starting with the weakest people, the hungriest, the most remote, the least able to protect themselves – starting with Ardara?’

‘One piece of hard forensic evidence is what I need, Hatton – not supposition – just one piece, that’s all I’m—’

A beaming face appeared upside down at the entrance of the hold.

‘Don’t tell me your chief diener isn’t a genius. Senility, indeed? I’ll give you senility, Professor. I have a print, as clear as clear can be …’

Roumande jumped down into the hold, clutching the logbook, his personal triumph, which he pushed into the astonished men’s faces. ‘Herschel was right, Adolphus. Less powder, less ink, a finer brush, flypaper, lay it absolutely flat, press down with an eraser and thus …’

Hatton moved the lamp over to examine the virgin piece of paper, with the replicated print to see – two double loops, a tented arch, and a whorl, almost falling off the tip of the finger denoting … what was it? An artistic temperament, loyalty, passion. Hatton and Roumande looked at each other.

‘So,’ said the Inspector. ‘You have a print. Excellent. Now you just need to match it to one of my prisoners and I think we have more than enough evidence to ensure that even you, Adolphus, will sleep well tonight. You’ll not mind the banging of the gibbet for that wretched boy, will you? You’ll close your eyes and slumber like a baby, in the full knowledge that I was right.’

‘You’re wrong,’ said Hatton, flicking through the ancient pages, looking for a name to match the print – once and for all – and as he did a green ticket flittered to the floor.

The inspector picked it up. ‘Half a shilling, all the way to Canada. A regular bargain, I’d say. Perhaps Mr Mahoney sold the tickets? Many did, along the beaches from where the coffin ships left. What do you mean, I’m wrong?’

‘The murderer isn’t one of your prisoners, Inspector, because this print, I’m afraid, we know.’

‘It’s that widow, isn’t it? She’s as guilty as sin,’ said the Inspector. ‘Shame to hang a lovely thing like her, but I’m afraid she’s up to her neck in it.’ As the Inspector spoke, he moved a flickering candle towards the watercolour. ‘So what about this girl in the picture here? A passenger? Known to Sorcha McCarthy, perhaps? A sister? A cousin? I can just about read … here, look … I think it says, Kitty.’

Katherine. His sister’s name was Katherine – Kitty.
The sister who was dead when the farm failed. It wasn’t Provence. It was Ireland.

Hatton ran his finger down the passenger list and quickly found ‘Kitty O’Shaughnessy, a twelve-year-old orphan travelling with her younger brother. Age eight, name of Paddy.’
Paddy meaning Patrick. Of course, but then why Sorcha?
What were they to each other? Was he the cousin in Canada with his stories of fishing, bear hunting, log cabins? Did he get on that ship, as an orphan? Grow up in Canada, and alter his name? Adopt a French accent? It was possible.

Hatton took the picture down from the beam and traced the young girl’s name, thinking,
Kitty, Kitty O’Shaughnessy
. ‘We have the fingerprint – clear and distinctive – and we know where to match it. And I can give you more than one piece of evidence, Inspector. I’ll test the brushes at St Bart’s, but I bet five guineas I’ll find traces of poison in the pots. Strychnine is made from
nux-vomica
– a plant – which will have been mixed here into a paste, and I suspect we’ll find arsenic as well, which as you know brings on terrible stomach cramps and mirrors cholera. And syringes are two a penny in a hospital.’

‘The killer works in a hospital?’

‘I’ll explain everything on the way, Inspector, but we need to leave here as quickly as possible. Dr Buchanan survived last night but he won’t survive another.’

The carriage hurtled back to London.

Inspector Grey popped a candied opium into his mouth. ‘You pick up this apprentice of yours and I’ll head for the docks, because I’m willing to bet right this minute O’Brian’s trying to get out of England. Maybe sail to America. But not on my watch, Hatton, and not while Disraeli’s on my back. Even if Patrice is the ribbon killer, O’Brian’s the bomber.’

‘Whatever you say, Inspector.’ Hatton and Roumande looked at each other as Grey jumped from the carriage at the corner of Salmon Lane. ‘I want you to check in hourly with The Yard, understand? Mark any telegram urgent. Somebody will find me. Good luck—’

And the Inspector was gone, disappearing into a throng of ship cranes, loading barrels, muscle-bound stevedores.

But Hatton had only one thought in his head. Buchanan. It was seven o’clock in the evening now, giving the poor man, what? A few hours at the most, if he was in the last stages of arsenic poisoning, or maybe this time, thought Hatton, the killer would do something quicker. Like a slam to the back of the head with a hammer? Or a grab from behind, as Dr Buchanan left the hospital, an old man, unsteady on his feet? The killer was strong, mendacious, and clever. A jaunty, ‘How the devil are you, monsieur?’
A twist of the arm, a slice to the jugular. Over.

‘I’ll go straight to the morgue, Adolphus. I might yet catch him there.’

‘Good thinking, Albert. I’ll try Buchanan’s office.’

Roumande charged to the North Wing, and Hatton made his way
quickly along the South Wing corridors to find the door to Buchanan’s office was shut. Hatton put his ear to the door, readying himself. Utter silence. He turned the handle with a dull click and pushed the door slowly to see the wood-panelled room. His eyes scouring a well-swept fireplace, a side table littered with a small collection of stethoscopes, and in the centre of the room, a Persian carpet, a large teak desk covered in … feathers … blood-soaked feathers. The duck’s blank eyes, yellow slits; its head decapitated and left on the desk amidst a pool of dark blood, and written in the blood, amongst the abandoned coffee cups and biscuit crumbs –
Quackkk
.

Hatton sat down at the desk and saw splayed out in front of him Dr Buchnan’s treasured article for the October edition of
The Lancet
. He slumped in the chair and read quickly all of Buchanan’s personal history. His inoculation programme for workhouse children, his endless papers on typhus victims, and his so-called groundbreaking work on cholera. The research done at a place Hatton knew.
Funded by the Works Committee, Ardara, Donegal, July 1847
.

It analysed estimated infectious disease levels among those deemed suitable for urgent emigration, as laid out in HM government’s Gregory Clause. When these people boarded
The Liberty
, they were dying already, he thought. Hatton peered at one of the Wedgwood coffee cups to see thick grains – so easily disguised as sugar – but it wasn’t sugar, was it?

‘Open up!’

‘No need to bang so hard, Professor. I’m coming.’ Roumande peeled the door open, bleary-eyed and rubbing the back of his head.

‘My God. Was he here? Was he just here? Jesus, Albert. Have we missed him? Which way did he go?’

Roumande made a groaning sound. ‘We won’t catch him, Adolphus, unless we know where he’s going. He’s not travelling by foot and I’ve been out like a light for a good ten minutes, but I suppose I should be grateful he didn’t kill me. Yes, he was here … waiting behind the door, then gone in a flash. And all this is my fault.’

‘Your fault? What are you talking about? Never mind all that, Albert. Arsenic is easily scraped from flypaper. You said it yourself, didn’t you? That we’re practically eating the stuff? That’s how he’s poisoning Dr Buchanan. Right under our noses, scraping off the flypaper and putting arsenic in the coffee, whilst he sketched the poor man in his office among the biscuits, the tea, the silver pot, making jokes – all the time smiling and watching him die.’ Hatton looked at his friend who was ashen, about to collapse at any minute. ‘Sit down here, Albert, before you fall down,’ Hatton said, as he unravelled the watercolour from the shipwreck. ‘We should have known, because look – it’s drawn in exactly the same style as the girl we have hanging on the wall.
Sleeping Beauty
?’

Hatton smoothed the picture flat, his thoughts whizzing around his head, but as he said it, he knew he was right. Patrice was the killer. There wasn’t any doubt. And the fingerprint was enough to send him to the gallows.

‘The print, Roumande. Where is it?’

Roumande rubbed the back of his head. ‘That’s why he hit me. He’s taken the logbook, too. One last sitting, Dr Buchanan begged only this morning, out of the city somewhere, saying the evening light is best for portraits and I encouraged it. Oh, and he might be a killer but he’s
not without a sense of humour. He’s took the fingerprint right out of my hand but left the beads with a note, addressed to me.’ Roumande took a sip of porter, and rubbed his head, read, ‘To
Monsieur Albert Roumande, For Your Own Learning and Erudition, Sir
– and see here, he’s marked page one hundred and twenty-three of the
New World Flora
book.’ Roumande sighed, put his head in his hands. ‘Do you think I’m getting old, Adolphus?’

‘Of course not. Why, just look at the way you shimmied up the rigging …’

‘Naive, then? Foolish?’

‘No, no, Albert.’

‘It’s kind of you to say so, but …’ Roumande rose from his chair and staggered over to the trestle table. ‘Put the beads under the Zeiss, Adolphus, but I already know my knowledge was there all the time, right at the back of my head, I just didn’t file it properly. We have an old dresser which was my wife’s. Came with us from Paris, years ago, and mahogany has a distinct burnish to it. The wood of the rosary beads isn’t the same at all. It’s a type of slow-growing cedar.’

‘You’re bleeding, Albert.’

‘Bleeding? Am I?’ Roumande didn’t seem to care. ‘Knowledge of botany was a clue, but not the flowers or the hops. It was the beads, always the beads.’ And at once, Hatton realised that Sorcha’s insistence on getting them back had been verging on the desperate – the surest sign of guilt.

Hatton checked the reference book. ‘You’re right. The molecular pattern matches almost exactly, a coastal Canadian Red Wood.
Sequoia sempervirens.
These beads are from Canada, and though Patrice was born in Ireland, in 1848, he sailed to the New World on
The Liberty
, and found
himself on Isle aux Coudres where he grew up, grew bold, learnt a new language – a perfect disguise – and armed with the logbook, made his way back to England.’