The Devil's Ribbon (28 page)
Roumande laughed at his own idiocy, then said, ‘
Ouch
,’ still rubbing his head, continuing, ‘The islands of eastern Canada are full of disease, brought to the portsides by immigrants, and it occurred to me, even before I took that print on the shipwreck, that Patrice was very reluctant to do the fingerprinting and …’
But all Hatton could think was,
she knew
. She knew all the time, she helped him, and that’s why Patrice was always hovering around her hospital bed, asking Hatton questions as to her welfare. They were cousins.
‘And the Irish went to Canada during the famine, didn’t they? Irish orphans, spread across Canada like a stain, and along the way they were helped by French families, other Catholics, who lived near the Lawrence. It seems so obvious, in retrospect.’
Roumande nodded. ‘He said he was from Provence, but that accent of his? It was so polished off. It was almost Parisian in its intonation, but then, again, not so. The girls and I teased him about it. But now I know he smoothed it down for a purpose—’
Just like me
, thought Hatton, who once had a thick country accent, but had rubbed it away, keen to get up the next step of the ladder and blend into the melee that was London Society.
Roumande looked so disappointed. ‘Was I blind?’
‘Yes, Albert. We were both blind. You wanted to think the best of him, a young man full of zest and a real interest in forensics, who you welcomed into your family. And I was blinded by her. His first French words were probably learnt on one of the islands. His name was Patrick
O’Shaughnessy and at age eight he sailed on
The Liberty
to Isle aux Coudres, the French-speaking part of Canada. Something happened on that ship which haunted him, haunted his victims, too. That’s why they let him in, offered him a drink. He either won their trust somehow, or they simply recognised him and were guilt-ridden.’
‘Patrice was the visitor? And she paved the way?’
Hatton nodded. ‘He had no family, he was an orphan, and then he lost his only sister. He had a terrible score to settle.’
Roumande went over to the picture, the one of the cholera girl. ‘Which is why he was so troubled by the girl we cut, Adolphus. She reminded him of someone close to him. Someone he lost? I thought it odd at the time, how Patrice was a body collector but couldn’t bear for the girl to be cut, yet he could happily stomach the others.’
Hatton leant against his desk. ‘He knew about religion, plants, and by working closely with us, the nature of forensics. We gave him enough knowledge to cover his tracks and keep one step ahead of us. He came to us because he wanted to kill Dr Buchanan. I didn’t tell you at the time, but Sorcha fainted when Patrice came to the house, as soon as she saw him. I thought it was grief, but I now know it was simply fear that he should be so bold, or he might in fact be caught. She helped him, didn’t she?’
Roumande looked at his hands.
Hatton said, ‘Before we find Buchanan, I need to go to her, Albert.’
But when Hatton got to the ward she was already gone, leaving only an empty bed and a note under her pillow addressed in the plainest of hands to
Professor Adolphus Hatton, Esquire
. Hatton sat on the end of the bed, putting the paper to his parched lips and then read:
My Dear Adolphus,
I don’t ask for you to forgive me. But I know I owe you an explanation, because you saved my life, and believe me when I say that in another time and place we might have been happy together – but there’s no point thinking like that now, is there? I am just a foolish girl, and despite all that we have done, that remains the heart of me.
My story is a sad one and perhaps will win some sympathy. It is impossible to put into words what I felt, because they took away my father, my mother, my brothers and sisters. Nothing was left by 1848 – just the voices of the dead and me, an empty shell. Ardara was ransacked, tumbled, burnt to the ground, and when you uttered those words,
Mortui vivos docent
– never a truer word was said. Because four hundred and twenty dead voices were calling me. And they were calling Patrice, too. They called him all the way from Canada – across the hurling sea – where he sought me out here in London and told me what to do. When I first laid eyes on him, he reminded me of those terrible times, and who I really was.
On the morning of the tumbling, men came with rifles in their hands, twitching for blood and more than blood. Though she could barely stand from hunger, my mother was raped by that animal, the gombeen man who had come to herd us to the ships.
Patrick’s sister Kitty was drowned. She was signed fit to travel by your eminent quack, Dr Buchanan, but of course, she had typhus, and on route to Canada was locked in the hold, and when that ship hit the rocks off Isle aux Coudres? Well, he tells me the screaming was terrible. It haunts him still. I mop his brow,
I hold his hand but nothing will comfort him save one thing.
Revenge is a wild kind of justice, they say.
His real name is Patrick by the way and we are first cousins. Once you found the beads – a foolish mistake to discard them like that in the rookeries – we knew it was only a matter of time till you discovered the truth about us. But blood is thicker than water, you see.
It pains me that you will call me a murderer, but I am proud of what I did. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life? Isn’t that what the dead teach the living? And it was no crime surely, compared to what those monsters did to us?
You see, I let my cousin in that fateful night to deal with Gabriel, my do-gooder husband, fool that he was. I also visited Mr Hecker and gave him a draught. I lured the chef to the island. He was Catholic, and lonely you see, and it was easy for me. He thought I’d come back from the dead, he thought I was a ghost, a chimera, a vision – he was overwhelmed by me. He paid the price.
Fearing your forensics, we tried our best to leave no trace – except the glitter, of course, which Paddy spread everywhere to lead you to others who wanted to be martyrs anyway. But in the end, you’re not a fool and we weren’t quite good enough for a man like you. Once you had the beads in your hand, and the botany book, it really was just a matter of time. And time is like sand – it runs out as we must run. But please, don’t try to follow us. We’re still ahead of you and there’s another who’s demanding our attention. It must be done. Revenge is a wild kind of justice.
But as I write this note, despite what you think of me now, I will always be your dearest, and most respectfully, friend forever.
Sorcha O’Shaughnessy
Hatton folded the note, knowing she was gone – but then a hand on his shoulder, the light touch of a true friend.
‘We need to hurry. Dr Buchanan could still be alive, Adolphus. We must go—’
Work. Work is what I must do. No more of her.
Hatton concentrated. ‘You say Patrice isn’t travelling by foot?’
‘Just before he coshed me, I heard a horse whinny, outside in the yard.’
‘How would he get Dr Buchanan to go with him? Didn’t you say that you encouraged them to do one last picture somewhere out of the city?’
‘My fault … all of this is my fault.’
‘Never mind all that. Think, Albert. Think really hard. Did Dr Buchanan say where?’
Albert thought for a second, his head splitting with pain. ‘I can’t be certain, but there was a discussion about the Celtic monument for cholera victims being a wonderful backdrop. It’s a site for remembrance, just beyond Highgate village, near some old plague meadows, I believe.’
‘A monument, you say? I know the place. Up high on a hill, north of Highgate. The cross can be seen for miles. It sits perched on top of a plague pit tumulus, doesn’t it?’
‘I believe it does.’
‘Call a carriage, Albert,’ said Hatton. ‘And bring your gun from the mortuary. Bring mine, as well. That’s where they’ve gone – I just know it.’
They would leave for Canada tomorrow, but in the meantime, they’d dug at least six feet down into the old plague pit, but still the old man seemed to be squirming, the earth shifting above him. Sorcha said, a little crossly, ‘I think he’s still alive. We need to finish him off. Hurry.’
‘Don’t worry, cousin,’ said Patrice. ‘A few more shovels of earth …’
But the doctor seemed unwilling to die. At one point, up came a desperate hand flailing around, which Patrice had to whack again and again with a spade, practically chopping it off, before a foot appeared at the other end of the grave. It was almost comic in its timing and she couldn’t help but laugh.
But the earth was definitely still shifting a little, Sorcha thought. But perhaps it was just the bugs, the black flies, and the worms? Her
own father had died this way. During the forced emigration, he’d hid her from the British down deep in a bog hole, the two of them, lasting three days and two nights before baying bloodhounds sniffed them out, screaming blue bloody murder.
‘
Get out, O’Shaughnessy. We know you’re there. Hecker’s ship, or the gallows? What’ll it be
…’
He whispered in the dark, ‘I’ll get up there first, child, and distract them. Are you ready?’
‘But what’ll I do, Da?’
‘Get your head down, head for the hills, keep running, and whatever you do, whatever happens, girl, don’t look back, I’ll be right behind you …’
It took just one glance over a shoulder to see soldiers smash her darling da with a rifle butt back into the wormy ground. But she kept running, through gushing streams, tearing briars, scrambling for her life, over rocks and jagged stones till she saw a wide green valley, like a dream, and a Georgian house, splendid on a peaceful mountainside with the vista of the sea – wide waves breaking the Atlantic.
Saoirse
, she thought, freedom. Desperate with hunger, she laid down on the steps of the magnificent house –
no more running
– and Gabriel must have found her there, a lost lamb, and took her in, fed her, clothed her, and eventually bedded her. But she was a shell, an empty shell, and he meant nothing. Just another ticket to who knows where.
Ten years later, her cousin had his hat pulled down, a looming shadow on the wall in the garden at White Lodge.
‘Why, if it isn’t my darling cousin. Sorcha O’Shaughnessy? Remember me? Sure, it’s only Paddy …’
He’d come all the way from Canada on a ship, he said, and crept up on her when she was painting an oil – to ease her troubled spirit – in one of the outhouses, but as she turned around, she knew at once what this visitor wanted –
her
– because blood is thicker than water.
Paddy put her right about everything, including her husband, who she’d foolishly thought of as her saviour.
‘Your saviour? Are you mad? A fucking traitor to his own people, more like. And you let him touch you? Bed you? You should hang your head in shame, cousin, because when he comes to your bed, he stinks of the dead.’
‘What should I do? How can I redeem myself? Tell me?’ she said, sick to her stomach.
‘Move out of his room, never let him touch you again, and then, sure, listen to your long-lost cousin. It’s God’s will.’
She sat down on the milking chair in the outhouse and listened as Paddy continued on the subject of her husband. ‘Gabriel was in charge of the whole thing, Sorcha. I was a stable boy at the big house, I heard them talking. Hecker, Pomeroy, that quack of a doctor – all sitting round a table, and your man at the helm. A tumbling of the whole area and to get what? Money from Mr Hecker for the land cleared, so he could buy enough food to feed the few carefully chosen tenants McCarthy said he could support. Which was ten … just ten fucking people out of four hundred and thirty … and your name was on his list, cousin.’
He told her all that he’d heard, crouched down, at an opened window:
‘The estate is in debt and the simple fact is, gentlemen, I cannot feed everyone. According to Monsieur Pomeroy’s nutritional forecasts, based on his expertise with workhouse diets for the British government, with the crops all failed and a harsh winter on its way, I can only afford to keep ten carefully selected tenants at the most. The rest will have to go. Which is where you come in, Mr Hecker. In return for your land, we want safe passage for these cottiers. Your vessels – they are seaworthy, I hope?’
‘Of course they are. What do you take me for?’
‘A man who likes to turn a quick profit, Mr Hecker.’
Laughter.
‘Do you have a man who can organise things? The people are weak, but they might resist. I don’t want a riot. I don’t want blood on my hands.’
Mr Hecker again.
‘There’s a man called Mahoney, a gombeen man, who lives by himself up the side of a mountain somewhere. Much hated by the locals, but efficient. He does a little work for me and can offer the incentives for those who must leave – land when they get there, cabins, that sort of thing …’
A thump on the table.
‘That man’s a hooligan. A lying scoundrel. People say he murdered his own brother. He’s only just been released from prison for some other offence involving a young woman. Jesus, Mr Hecker, is there nobody else but him …’
‘Sometimes when you want to catch vermin, Mr McCarthy, you need a rat catcher.’
A chair pushed over:
‘I shan’t listen to this any more. This is a bad idea … forget I ever invited you in … the Ardara tenants will stay here and starve, if necessary, but I shan’t entertain that gombeen man …’
Whispering.
And then:
‘I’m glad you see sense, because beggars cannot be choosers, McCarthy. Choose ten and let the rest go. It’s your duty, sir. You’ve heard the British government’s view on this. It’s better the people go to Canada, where they have a chance to live – and if it’s my ships you use, then I choose the men to organise the emigration on my own terms. Dr Buchanan here is an eminent physician and very reliable. You have to trust me
…
when it comes to exporting men, I know what I’m damn well doing
…
’
The scratching of a pen. The clink of glasses.
‘Very well. It’s a deal, but you will tell no lies. The state of the cabins, the conditions when they get there, because these people are weak and it’s a hellish voyage and reports say daily, the islands of Canada are full of cholera. And that only last week a vessel hit the treacherous rocks off the coast of Newfoundland and five hundred perished, never even reached the coastline
…
’
‘You have my word, McCarthy
…
’
She put her hands to her ears, but Patrice continued:
‘Go ahead and stop your ears, cousin, but that’s what I heard. Gabriel played God, walking the line along the beaches, his fingers twitching his pistol in case a riot broke out. But we could barely stand,
never mind fight, as he decided with Dr Buchanan who should stay and who should go. I was in the line. He sent my sister to her death in that coffin they called a ship, for it was a leaking vessel and not fit for sea. No wonder it went down. Most of us died when it hit the rocks off Isle aux Coudres. A few of us survived to tell the tale and, of course, this logbook, which rolled up on the shore in an oak chest, unsullied and testament to everything. Open it up and read the prayers of the dead. The survival of this logbook is a miracle … God’s gift, Sorcha, and it’s speaking to us – it’s our destiny.’
There was a soft breeze in the air and a ruffle over the parched grasses of the plague pit meadows. A lark rose on a melodious note. She tilted her head and listened – but the whispering had stopped.
At last.
Wonderful, endless silence which she broke with, ‘The doctor must surely be dead by now, hurry. Quickly, cousin … we need to go …’
But Patrice was unwilling, saying they’d made enough mistakes already, and that men could survive for a good ten minutes if an air pocket got in the way, and they had to be sure. No more mistakes. But she was trembling. ‘We’ll give it five more seconds, Paddy. But then we run and we keep on running …’
‘Where is this place?’
‘Up ahead. A mile beyond the village. Are the guns loaded, Albert?’
Roumande nodded, his finger ready, heavy on the trigger.
The friends moved quickly, but with stealth, through the rustling grasses. Up ahead, scudding storm clouds – pewter morphing into
thunder. A white crack across the sky. The parched meadows suddenly black, the heavy swell of raindrops –
splat, splat, splat
– slow but steady, and up ahead – high on a grassy tumulus, under the shadow of a Celtic cross – two figures they recognised, lit up like firecrackers.
‘It’s them …’
Another crack, fork lightning connecting to the earth, breaking through the sky, into a prism of mauve, sulphur, azure – and the figures were gone, vapours in the air.
‘They’re running away, Albert …’
‘So where the devil’s Buchanan?’
‘Patrice was levelling the ground, Albert. He had a spade. Buchanan’s just been buried. Quick. C’mon …’
The two men threaded their way, quickly, heads down, their backs lashed with the pelting rain, stumbling over molehills and a meadow full of tumuli – dead bodies overgrown with three hundred years of grass. Roumande hurled himself behind the biggest. ‘Get your head down, Adophus, and I can get him from here … that’s Patrice, heading left … I’ve got him in the viewing finder … like a damn Jack rabbit … she’s going right … she’s limping … quick …’
‘You go after him, Albert. I’m heading to the mound because Dr Buchanan could still be alive. It’s worth a try …’
‘And the girl?’ asked Roumande.
‘Leave Sorcha to me,’ insisted Hatton. ‘She’s injured, still weak, and she’ll leave prints that will be easy to track. Those stitches on her face aren’t healed, and if she exerts herself, they’ll split, then splatter the grass in blood. But Dr Buchanan first. You have to let me try … I’ve let him down once already …’
‘If you’re sure, Adolphus?’
‘I’m sure,’ answered Hatton, determined.
Roumande stood up, heading left with his gun, the trigger ready. Hatton bolted ten yards straight ahead, then scrambled up to the top of a tumulus, with a quick, flitting glance left to see Sorcha McCarthy, way off – a pathetic, rain-soaked figure, slowly threading her way downhill towards a stream.
The earth was fresh. The discarded spade was ready. Hatton grabbed it, tears in his eyes, remembering his father’s last moment on earth. He came too late on that ominous carriage from London, but not this time.
Dig, dig, Addie.
His sister’s voice.
Dig, put your back into it, Addie.
Mary’s voice.
Black earth. Five and a half feet down to see – worms, old bones from years ago, the Black Death, plague people …
Keep going, lad. You’re a farmer’s son. Come on now. Not too proud to dig, are you?
His father’s voice, and swishing the earth away, choking back his tears, to see – a face, the flicker of an eye. Dr Buchanan.
Breathe. Breathe
…
He’s not dead. He’s not quite dead
…
Using dexterous fingers, quickly digging the earth from the old man’s mouth, giving him air, a kiss of life – the old man sobbing like a baby now, pressed to Hatton’s beating heart.
‘My God … my God … they buried me alive … Hatton? Is that you, Adolphus …’
‘It’s me, Dr Buchanan … I’m here … I’ll always be here for you, sir …’
‘I made a terrible mistake … people died on that ship …
The Liberty
… they punished me … oh, God … bless you my son …’
‘Stay here … I have to go … I have to go now, sir … just gather your strength … I’ll be back … I promise you …’
Roumande was a bulky man, forty-six in May, but he was fast and better than fast, he was a damn good shot. He’d shimmied, his mouth eating earth, shifting his big body like a frog, splayed out, invisible, snaking across stones, molehills, tumuli, his viewing finder to his eye, hidden by the high scorched grass, his loaded pistol ready, until he reached another, younger man, who was without water, exhausted, with his back turned, panting in the heat –
‘Put the gun down, Patrice. Put it down. Right now …’
Was it simply bravado that made Patrice turn around and say, ‘Well, well, well. No flies on you, monsieur. You caught us up, then? But you’re too late. Dr Buchanan is dead already and you’ll be next.’
‘It’s over, Patrice. Lay your gun down and come with grace …’
‘Grace?’
Patrice shook his head at Roumande like he was a fool. ‘Do you know, monsieur, it’s a shame that it should end like this, because I really liked you, which is why I didn’t kill you back there in the morgue. You were almost like a father, really. And as for those girls, those beautiful girls of yours …’