Tom All-Alone's (20 page)

‘You know who I am,' she says in a shrill and angry voice. ‘You take my money many times – it is money as good as any man's – I demand to enter dis place!'

‘I'm sorry, madymosselle, but orders is orders. The commander says I am to refuse you entry. And round 'ere, what the commander says goes.'

She has by now so far encroached on Phil that Charles can see her profile against the wall. She is a black-haired woman, with large wary eyes, and a drawn and hungry look, and flesh so thin and taut that the bones of her face seem to press against the skin. It's clearly not the first time the Frenchwoman has been there – or made trouble when she has; the trooper frowns, and folds back his sleeves, then makes his stately measured way to the door.

‘You will not gain entry here, mistress.'

The woman laughs out loud in rather an affected manner, and stands her ground.

‘I will not, eh?'

‘No,' he says heavily, ‘you will not. Even if I have to carry you out. Make no mistake, I don't want to do it. I would rather treat a lady such as yourself with the respect she is due. But if I must, I will. You may be sure of that.'

She looks the trooper up and down, knowing that even her ferocious determination is no match for a man of his training.

‘I will not forget zis,' she says scornfully between clenched teeth. ‘You have not use me well. You have been mean and shabby – as mean and shabby as that miserable lawyer in Lincoln's Inn Fields. You will be sorry to cross one such as I!'

She turns on her heel, and with what she clearly imagines to be an aristocratically contemptuous flick of her cloak, she is gone.

The trooper shakes his head and returns to Charles.

‘My apologies, Mr Maddox, sir.'

‘It's no inconvenience to me. But I admit to some surprise at seeing a lady here.'

‘She's no lady, sir,' says the trooper, ‘though I might have called her one, out of courtesy. I have all sorts, here. Mostly they come for skill, like you, but some just for idleness. There are even ladies of title and fashion who come here merely to amuse themselves between morning calls and the milliner's. I keep a case of pocket pistols in the drawer there, expressly for the purpose. But when you own a place such as this, you have to be on your guard. I have a long nose for such as she – such as come with revenge in their hearts and dreams of
score-settling
and I know not what. She is one of those, sir, if I am not very much mistaken, and a dab she is at hitting the mark. I don't know much of women, Mr Maddox, but she's an erratic, that one, that much I do know. I don't want her on my conscience.'

This is quite considerably the longest speech Charles has ever had from the trooper's mouth, and he can see from the creases on the broad brown forehead that the Frenchwoman, whoever she is, has been troubling him for some time.

‘I'm sure she means nothing by it. It's no doubt just her way – they are an impassioned and capricious race. I don't think you need worry unduly.'

It sounds trite, even to his own ears, but it seems to go some way to reassure the trooper. Though, as we shall see, he will be far better advised to take no notice whatsoever of Charles' advice, and remain fully and vigilantly on his guard.

When Charles returns to Buckingham Street the house is silent. Billy has been dispatched on afternoon errands and Abel is nowhere about. He hesitates for a moment, wondering what best to do, then goes quietly down the back stairs towards
the kitchen. He hasn't seen Molly on her own since – since
then
– and feels he has to cross that line – establish how the two of them are to go on. But when he reaches the half-closed door he's stopped in his tracks by the most ordinary and at the same time the most astounding thing in the world. The sound of a girl's voice. Molly is singing. But there are no words, only a low cadenced humming to a melody unlike any Charles has ever heard before – indeed unlike any conventional European notion of what a ‘melody' actually is. But whatever it is, the sound seems to reach inside his head and ring to a deeper rhythm than four-four time. He stands listening, wondering if she's done this before and it's just that he has never heard her. He knew the girl could not speak and thought – wrongly it seems – that she was incapable of any sound. Something else he has assumed, and must now re-assess. But this small check – insignificant as you may think it is – is still enough to make him reconsider, and then retreat silently back the way he came.

Up in his great-uncle's room he finds both master and attendant sleeping peacefully over the subsiding fire. Charles pokes the smouldering coals and retrieves the newspaper from the floor at Stornaway's feet. Then he pours himself more brandy-and-water and sits down on the sofa. It's a long time since he's sat doing nothing, but yesterday is catching up with him. We would call it post-traumatic stress and wonder how he could possibly cope with such a serious injury without analgesics, but all such concepts are equally alien to Charles. He sits back and closes his eyes for a moment, lulled by the alcohol, the warmth, and the soft pattering of the fire. When he opens them again, the room is in darkness.

‘I let you sleep. You looked to be rather in need of it.'

Charles starts. It takes him a moment to recognize the voice, though he has known it all his life. Stornaway has gone and
Maddox is watching him quietly from the other side of the hearth. The long dark shadows cast by the low firelight give his face an austere, almost classical air.

‘Are you intending to tell me what has happened to you, or am I required to guess?'

Charles struggles to sit up, forgetting – but not for long – that he can't put any weight on his right hand.

‘I was – waylaid. By Tulkinghorn's hired henchman.'

‘You are sure of that?'

‘As sure as I can be. He'd been sent to warn me off, and took a little personal memento with him to make sure I took the point.'

He holds up his hand.

Maddox raises an eyebrow. ‘A rather brutal tactic, but without doubt an effective one. There is no infection?'

Charles shakes his head. ‘The girl is a very efficient nurse. The wound is clean, and I know what to look for.'

Maddox nods, reflectively. ‘I, too, lost many things in the course of my career. My faith in my fellow men, my freedom on occasion – albeit temporarily – and once, and once only, something more important than either of those things. But I never suffered a loss quite so tangible as yours. Your sangfroid, if I may say so, is admirable.' And he is, indeed, looking at Charles with an expression in his eyes his nephew cannot remember seeing before.

Charles shrugs, though his new-found self-possession is clearly not quite all Maddox believes it to be, for there are hot tears prickling his eyes now. He's spent so much of his life managing for himself and expecting nothing from those around him – so long without a mother, in the coolness cast by a distinguished but distant father – that kindness always comes to him as a shock, and it's kindness that has undone him now, not pain, however intense, or self-pity, however justified.

‘At least I know now that I'm not wasting my time,' he says eventually, and then explains, as concisely as he can, what he discovered at the Graham Arms.

‘But you have no clue as yet as to what this package contained?' says Maddox thoughtfully, when he has finished.

‘No,' says Charles, ‘but whatever it was, it terrified Cremorne enough to get Tulkinghorn involved – and Boscawen killed. This, my dear uncle, is no ordinary case of petty blackmail. There's something base and corrupt at the bottom of it all – something Cremorne absolutely cannot afford to come to light. That's why I know it's no coincidence I was attacked as soon as I left the rat-killing. I'll bet this thug has been following me for days and knew exactly what Milloy was going to tell me.'

‘No doubt.'

They are silent for a moment; the only sound the prim ticking of the ornate French clock on the mantelpiece.

‘There's something else—' begins Charles tentatively. He's been wondering whether to mention this – in fact, ever since he saw the butchery done to Lizzie's ravaged body he's wanted to talk to Maddox, get advice from Maddox, elicit from Maddox some part of the unparalleled insight he has into man's inhumanity to man. But in the two days since the murder, the Maddox he needs has been all but gone. But now, at last, the great Regency thief-taker has returned, and the flailing madman who took his place is stilled.

‘What is it, my boy?'

‘Do you remember the police coming here yesterday?'

Maddox frowns. ‘No – or at least—'

He stops, and the old terror creeps back into his face – the terror of knowing how much he no longer knows, of how black the blank spaces are becoming – and Charles realizes his mistake.

‘No matter, Uncle,' he says quickly. ‘It was just—'

‘But I
should
know – if there are officers of the law in this house –
my
house – then
I
should be the one to—'

Maddox's voice is catching that slightly hectic edge that Charles knows he must at all costs avoid. Not just for his uncle's sake, but his own.

‘Really – it is no matter, Uncle, I doubt they even crossed the threshold. They were merely enquiring as to my whereabouts the previous evening.'

Maddox looks sceptical. ‘And why should they wish to know that?'

‘Because I discovered a body yesterday. A girl I know – a whore – was murdered.'

‘There is nothing so very extraordinary about that, I fear.'

‘The point is not that she was killed, but
when
she was killed, and how.'

‘Go on.' Maddox's voice is clear again and his gaze steady; his mind has teetered but swung back from the shadow.

‘I saw her a few days before. The only reason I found the body at all was because I'd arranged to meet her there. She was going to tell me something – something about Sir Julius Cremorne. I don't know what, but I'm guessing it had something to do with what I found out at the Argyll Rooms. Because despite Cremorne's public reputation for high principles and a happy family life, he's been regularly debauching a whole host of young women.'

‘That, I am afraid to say, is not so very unusual either. At least among those of Sir Julius' class. But I admit it is hardly something a man in his position would want bruited abroad.'

‘But this girl wasn't just killed. She was
slaughtered
. With the same skill, and no doubt the same knife, that opened William Boscawen's throat, and was subsequently used on me.'

The details are soon given: first Boscawen, then Lizzie. The scene in Agnes Court plays again, reel by reel, through Charles' head. For some reason he finds himself recalling more than he remembers seeing at the time, but it's not so much the horror of it now as the utter banality. The clothes folded neatly on the chair. The boots placed by the fireside. Maddox is all silent calculating attention as he talks, his eyes half-closed, nodding now and then. When Charles has finished, Maddox does not respond straight away but takes a deep breath and stares into the fire. After a few moments – just when Charles fears he may have lost him once again – he starts to speak.

‘Did you find your finger?'

The question is so ludicrous – so darkly black-comical – that Charles doesn't know how to react. Is this his uncle's infamous wit, or is it just another example of his inability, so frequent now, to tell the acceptable from the offensive?

‘Well, I—' he stammers.

‘It is a perfectly serious question, Charles. Did you find your finger?'

Charles gapes at him. ‘I can hardly say I looked for it.'

‘But it was nowhere obvious – nowhere about you when you came to your senses?'

‘No – but the rats may well have had it by then. You know what it's like on the City Road.'

‘All the same,' says Maddox. ‘And you are sure that some of this unfortunate girl's internal organs were missing?'

‘Most of them were lying in pieces about the room, but I was told later at the police-station that the heart was definitely absent.'

‘And the breasts were also removed?'

‘Both of them. One was lying by her feet, along with what appeared to be her liver. Though there was so much disembowelled flesh I cannot really be sure.'

Maddox nods. ‘You perceive the pattern?'

A pause, then, ‘No, Uncle, I cannot say that I do.'

Maddox sits back. ‘Men such as this – men attracted to the point of compulsion by violence so extreme it violates every natural instinct or moral constraint – they are very rare, but they do, in my limited experience, exhibit very similar characteristics, both as a sub-species and as individuals. By the latter I mean that each murderer will have his own habits, and his own preferences, whether it be weapon, setting, victim, or some other little ritual or attribute which may elude the eye of even the most experienced of detectives. As to the former, I have encountered more than one instance – like the present one, indeed – where the perpetrator has felt himself compelled to take something from the victim, not so much a
memento mori
as a
memento delectare
– a way of reviving the illicit excitement generated by the crime long after the actual deed has passed. You will recall, I am sure, our conversation about the Ratcliffe Highway killings, and the watch that was taken from the body of the landlord of the King's Arms – an obvious instance of an otherwise meaningless piece of pilfering that can only be explained by the murderer's need to retain a material keepsake. But I am sure that you, as a scientist, are at least as well-qualified as I could be to venture an opinion on this subject.'

Charles, perhaps unsurprisingly, is in no state to offer an opinion on anything of the kind – if Maddox is right, even the pieces of the puzzle he thought resolved will need to be put back together in a new configuration. He's been assuming all along that Tulkinghorn hired some Cockney bludger to do his dirty work, but is it possible that Cremorne committed these crimes
himself
? He could have found out from Tulkinghorn where Boscawen was lodging, and he could just as easily have followed Lizzie home and slipped into the courtyard unseen in the small
hours. And he could – equally easily – have followed Charles to the Graham Arms. But was that really the voice he'd heard when he was lying face-down in the dirt? It didn't sound like a man of Cremorne's age – or one of his rank for that matter – and Charles is sure there was no stammer. But his recollection is fragmentary at best, and the voice never much more than a whisper.