The Obsidian Dagger (Horatio Lyle) (5 page)

So Tess didn’t look at the bodies. She didn’t even look at Mister Lyle. She stood as far back as she could and tried to look at the water, dedicate all her thoughts to it, try to ignore, among other things, the unpleasant odour which had lingered on even after the first sewer had opened and the river no longer seemed thick enough to walk on. In the shadow under the wharf, ice was forming, dirty brown ice dusted with white snow left over from the cold of the night before, and slowly thickening and spreading. Ice clung to the side of the ship too, and icicles hung from the masts; it pressed against the hull, crawling into every chipped and battered wooden crack. She remembered something about ice and salt water, but it was a vague haze against the all-present distraction of ... two
once-alive
people lying on a cart.

Lyle was saying something, but it was a something that he didn’t realize he was saying, and which no one really took seriously, so Tess only listened with half an ear.

She heard him say, in that distant voice he always used when thinking aloud or trying to remember something or occasionally talking to himself about electronic cations and anions after he’d dozed off by the fireside, ‘Necks broken, just like that; incredible strength, considering the thickness of the spine, extraordinary, right-handed; look at the bruising here, the fingers have pressed right down into the windpipe; he must be fast to get them both too; but this one has bruises around his hand so was probably killed second, at least he had time to put up a fight; I wonder if . . .’

Tess stared at the crowd, and let her mind drift. She thought of the time she’d first met Mister Lyle, that fateful night a few months back when a rich gentleman had offered her a whole sovereign to sneak in and steal any papers she might find . . . had it rained that night? She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t really remember much before that. It was as if something had switched in her mind, and the person before that night was another person, whose actions she could remember, but not the thoughts that had driven them. She couldn’t remember thinking before that night, though she was sure she must have. It took thought and dedication to spot a mark, to eye him up, to move with the rest of the street and match paces with the mark and, when he least expected it, to . . .

‘No drag marks on the boots. They weren’t dragged across the deck, they must have been bodily carried and thrown into the water. No bruising on the legs either. Dead before they hit the water, of course, and an interesting ring on this man’s - Stanlaw I presume . . . yes, coat from Savile Row, what a waste - hand. Two cogs, one inside the other, made of iron, and clock hands inside them, the larger outer cog indicating the hour, the smaller cog indicating the minute - one minute to midnight. How prophetic, considering the condition of the bodies and probable time of death. Very different. Very unusual. Perhaps if . . .’

And there it was, the little thing that had been bothering Tess. A flash of colour in the crowd, brighter than the blacks and greys of the thick fog, shining through for just a second, like Constable Charles’s smile. Gone to the left, re-emerging for a moment to the right. At her feet, Tess realized Tate was sniffing the air, shuffling slightly towards the crowd, nose wrinkled up and eyebrows scrunched down in an expression of concentration. Deep burgundy red, a scarf, possibly, drawn over nose and mouth against the cold, fading into the fog. It reminded her of something which she couldn’t put her finger on, something from a time when she wasn’t sure if she’d been thinking or not.

If she’d had Tate’s sense of smell, she could have added to the general impression a faint and sudden odour of ginger biscuit, that faded with the flash of red, into the fog.

 

Lyle straightened up. ‘Even with my natural inclination for continued self-preservation and the many adventures a prolonged life might bring,’ he declared, ‘I think it’s fair to say that
no one
would like to meet this murderer in a dark alley at night.’ Having made this announcement, he looked down into Thomas’s shining eyes, to see what reaction this statement received. He sighed. ‘Except, perhaps, one.’

‘I’m sure, sir, that between us we could contrive a method of the killer’s downfall and passage into the hands of custody and Her Majesty’s justice . . .’

Lyle put a kindly hand on Thomas’s shoulder. ‘Lad, have we ever had a serious discussion about slippers and a decent ham omelette by the fire?’

‘No, sir.’

‘How about . . . the curious physical properties of inertia?’

‘No, sir!’

‘No.’ Lyle let out another profound sigh, and stared away. ‘I thought not.’

‘Should I research the subject, sir? Would it help?’

A look almost of dread flickered across Lyle’s face. ‘Maybe not right now . . . Charles!’ He grabbed at the first escape he saw, taking everyone, especially Charles, by surprise. ‘Did I hear mention of a witness?’

As they turned to go, Lyle half-turned back to look at the two bodies, Captain Fabrio and the mysterious Mr Stanlaw, employee of Lord Lincoln and thus instantly suspect, and hesitated. Very quickly he leant over and, with a speed and dexterity that would have surprised and impressed the expert eye of Tess, pulled the iron ring off Stanlaw’s finger, slipping it into his pocket and walking away with the most innocent expression.

He had a bad feeling about the ring; but then, he had a bad feeling about anything which might have to do with Lord Lincoln.

 

Old Edgar was a beggar apart. Long ago, when perhaps he was merely middle-aged Edgar and just seemed a bit worn by time, he had perfected the art of leaping out in front of sailors newly arrived from the furthest land across the furthest ocean, clinging to them and screaming, ‘Let me save you, the plague is here! I can save you, the plague is come an’ all the metal that you carries will be dust by the morn. Turn back now before the plague is spread any further; you ain’t goin’ to die if I can’t save you. For God’s sake and your men’s get rid of your metal now before it contaminates you all!’

Regardless of the native language of the person who heard this, the effect was usually dramatic - sometimes more so for a small piece of soap Old Edgar kept in his mouth, just in case foaming was required. In the docks there were thousands who daily held out their hands in a desperate plea for survival, but, as the bobbies sometimes noted on their way back to the station, Old Edgar hadn’t yet been broken as the others had, and as a result, he could suffer with
flair
.

Which explains why, when Lyle approached the bollard where Old Edgar was sitting counting a very small pile of pennies from a very large collection of pockets, the old, stick-like man took one look at him, threw himself flat at Lyle’s feet, clung on to his knee and started whimpering, ‘You shouldn’t have come here, good sir, the place is death, good sir, ain’t for the likes of you. They breathe the death here, it is on every coin you have been given by anyone what comes here. You’ll take the metal contaminated with their death back to your loved ones, sir, an’ it’ll kill them all. Oh, the death is come . . .’

Thomas looked shocked, Lyle looked a bit embarrassed. Tess rolled her eyes and said, ‘If there’s one person gettin’ money here, it’s gonna be
me
.’

Lyle slowly turned to look at her, eyebrows raised.

She coughed. ‘For charity?’

Lyle turned back to Old Edgar. ‘Good sir, there isn’t a plague.’

Edgar took this reassurance in his stride. ‘You mayn’t have seen it yet, sir, but believe me, it stalks the streets at night plucking at every new-born babe and . . .’

‘I’m a policeman.’

Edgar backed off. He looked Lyle up and down. His expression suggested that he wasn’t very impressed, but in a far more normal voice he said, ‘Oh. New, are you?’

‘No, just professionally misguided. May I ask a few questions? ’

The beggar man, who in many ways took pride in being the most dramatic of all who were forced into his trade east of the Tower and south of Bethnal Green, considered and said, ‘I already spoke to the Inspector.’

‘Would this be Inspector Vellum?’

‘That sounds ’bout right.’

‘A man with a potato for a face, a turnip for a brain and a shameful attitude towards all in need?’

‘Could be.’

‘I imagine he wasn’t keen on supporting you in your hour of need.’

‘He weren’t the most comfortable customer I seen.’

‘Ten shillings in exchange for the truth. Not whatever you told Vellum: the
real
truth.’

Edgar managed, just in time, to force a considering expression on to his face. ‘I can speak a dark tale, mister, a story of doin’s in the night and -’

‘Sir,’ said Lyle in an impatient voice, ‘your beard is filthy on the surface but not below the newest growth, implying regular washing and only a superficial application of dirt. Your nails are long and curved, but the ends are worn down in straight lines, and there is a degree of abrasion across these lines at the points, suggesting regular filing. Your boots are torn but the socks you wear inside the boots are not only socks, but supported with leather and wool so that, in effect, you are wearing two pairs of boots, not one. Your jacket is slashed and filthy, but the lining has a seam here,’ he snatched at the astonished man’s coat, ‘and here, where stuffing has been sewn inside by a careful seamstress who knows how to leave an exterior ragged but the interior warm, not to mention three extra pockets lined with sawdust to prevent the rattling of coins when you move. You are, in short, not just a beggar man but a thief, and you are taking money at a rate to anger the most serene starving textile worker or any frost-bitten old maid struggling to keep out of the workhouse. Now, I could go to all your starving, diseased, and broken colleagues on the street, the ones who die in corners and are never noticed until they start to smell of the death that killed them, all the true cripples who are too weak to dance and sing a merry tune for any passing stranger with a weak eye and a weaker pocket lining, and tell them the truth about good Old Edgar, king of the beggars. Or I could pay you ten shillings and hope my conscience doesn’t keep me awake at night. Please tell me now which you would find more useful towards the rendering of an accurate witness statement?’

 

Five minutes later, Edgar sat by the fire in a local tavern that stank of cheap ale, cheap tar and, very faintly, cheap opium, nursing a bowl of porridge and a small pot of ale. Lyle sat wearing the expression that Tess had secretly marked in her mind as ‘you
will
have a bath, Teresa, or you will
not
have supper’. It was an expression that brooked no argument.

Edgar talked, while the world moved around them.

‘I was woked by the bell, ringing one. It were a cold night, last night, the river were starting to freeze, like it do today. I were under one of the piers, near where the old sewers used to drain out at high tide, ’til they built this new pumping thing, but it were still warmer there, out of the wind. You ever heard the wind, when the river is just startin’ to freeze? You hear waves an’ you hear stone all at once - they say the river will be all froze over by tomorra mornin’ too, like stone. But it weren’t just the wind what I heard.’

‘What
did
you hear?’ Lyle’s impatience was gone, replaced by the same tight determination Tess had seen when he looked at the bodies.

‘I heard someone on that ship - the
Pegasus
. The lantern was lit. Two men, talkin’. And their footsteps.’

‘Could you hear what they said?’

‘No. Not those two. One sounded foreign . . . I don’t know why I say so, but his voice were all . . . bendy, not like the other fella. Like he were one of them circus clowns doin’ a silly foreign accent. The other fella always talked lower than the foreign man, like he was threat’nin’ or scared or something. Then there were this sound like a door or something banging ’gainst the wood, something
really
heavy, an’ then this foreign man was screamin’, but it got cut off with a real nasty crack, and the other man was runnin’ but I didn’t see ’im and then there were this other crack and then someone said something and someone else answered an’ I ain’t never heard no voice like that voice.’

‘What was it like?’

‘It was like . . . like what the earth would sound like if it talked, or . . . or like a rumble, deep down. An’ then this other man says something in a more normal voice, and then there’s these two splashes, quick after each other, an’ then more footsteps, and then a carriage, goin’ away.’

‘A carriage? As in a hansom cab?’

‘No, I heard ’least two horses an’ it sounded all heavy.’

‘What was the more normal voice like?’

‘Like . . . well, it was almost like . . . Like honey. It was all brown and smooth and warm but cool all at once, like it was ... honey. Like maple. Can’t say why I say so, but that’s what I think.’

Edgar hesitated.

‘And?’

Edgar kept hesitating.

‘I like irrational impressions and utter honest frankness,’ said Lyle quietly. ‘It relieves me of my doubts and fears whenever I contemplate the human race. And?’

‘It’d may be my imaginings.’

‘But?’

‘I’d’ve sweared the other man, the normal man with the honey voice, I’d’ve sweared he was American.’

Lyle sighed. ‘Thank you, sir. You’ve been very generous with your time.’

 

Another place, an equal time.

A knock on the door.

‘Enter.’

A voice like maple syrup. Warm and cold all at once. Speaking fluent English, but not quite as it is spoken in England.

‘Sir.’

‘Henton. Does her ladyship require my attention?’

‘Her ladyship, sir, appears to be absent this morning.’

‘She appears to be absent many mornings. A night-owl, her ladyship. But I am sure she spends her day in piety enough. What, then, Henton, is the concern?’