Avery & Blake 02 - The Infidel Stain (46 page)

‘Please, Agnes, be calm,’ said Allington. He looked oddly ungainly with his hands raised, his elegance suddenly gawky. ‘Mr Blake will do us no harm, we must simply be calm.’

‘I may not do you any harm,’ said Blake, ‘but then again I am a desperate man and therefore capable of anything. Moreover, while I’m not a bad shot at this range, I am excellent with a knife. So you’ll oblige me by moving into the corner.’ They did.

‘I’d hand you the gun, Avery,’ he said, apparently unsurprised to find me tied and dazed, ‘but I suspect you’re not yet fit to hold it.’ He put his knife in a pocket, came up to Lady Agnes and in one fluid movement wrested the bottle from her sleeve and smelt it. ‘Laudanum,’ he said.

He bent over Matty and inhaled her breath.

‘Agnes? Threlfall? What is this?’ said His Lordship.

Blake brought his face up close to Matty. ‘What she has given you, it is like poison. We must bring it up. Do you understand?’

Matty’s eyes were open but it was by no means clear that she had understood.

‘Matty, we think we have a way to help Pen. But you must harken to me.’

There were a bowl and jug on the chest of drawers. Blake grabbed the bowl and put it on the bed, then hauled Matty up, leaning her against his right side, his right hand still aiming the pistol at Allington. His left hand he thrust down her throat. She gagged and doubled up and a thin grey watery liquid spewed out of her mouth into the bowl. She coughed and retched again and more came up. And then again.

‘That’s it,’ he said, and patted her gently. When Matty had ceased coughing and retching he laid her down and pressed his head to her heart, the pistol all the time trained on Allington. ‘Her heartbeat is slow. Can you stand yet, William?’ he said to me.

I nodded, though I was not sure I could. He took hold of my shoulder, pulled me up and cut the cords holding my hands. He brought his head near mine, sniffed, and lifted an eyebrow.

‘Stay away from the candle,’ he said, ‘or we will all burn, guilty and innocent.’

I felt light-headed and as if my legs might at any moment give way. He dragged me over to sit next to Matty.

‘You must keep her upright and awake,’ he said. Then he turned to Allington. ‘What your sister poured down the girl’s throat was enough to kill her.’

‘That is nonsense,’ said Lady Agnes, ‘it was just to quieten her, that is all.’

‘Enough to damage her heart and brain, enough to stop her breathing. Enough to kill her,’ Blake said.

Matty’s eyes were open and she stared at me. I dabbed at her mouth, tipped a little water down her throat and smoothed stray wisps of hair from her face. ‘You must stay awake,’ I murmured.

‘Agnes, I am sure you can explain to Mr Blake and Captain Avery why Miss Horner is here.’

‘I shall do no such thing. The man is a desperate criminal.’

‘Sister!’

‘I should think it has something to do with the fact that before Mr Threlfall knocked me out Matty told me that she recognized His Lordship from Nat Wedderburn’s shop in Holywell Street,’ I said hoarsely.

‘We had no sinister intention. It was simply to protect your reputation,’ Lady Agnes said, as if it had all been entirely reasonable. ‘We planned to keep her here until Tuesday, then place her upon the same ship that was to transport her brother to Australia. Brother and sister were to be reunited after all.’

‘So Woundy got his claws into you and you went to Holywell Street to pay up,’ said Blake.

‘Yes,’ said Allington, sadly, ‘I did pay him.’

‘I think it is time you told your part,’ said Blake.

‘Allington!’ Lady Agnes said. ‘Do not—’

‘Enough, sister!’ He shuddered and clasped his hands together tightly. ‘I must speak of it, though it shames me more than I can say. It was Heffernan who introduced me to the man Eldred Woundy. I found him more persuasive than I expected. He said he wished to contribute to our school for orphans. He spoke of his disgust for the Anti-Corn-Law Leaguers and the factory owners; and he understood how much effort and expenditure it took to make any true impression on the causes of want, and how slowly that was forthcoming. It was obvious that his opinions were closer to the Chartists’ than mine, but I reasoned that Mr Disraeli had found things to praise in them, and perhaps I might too.

‘I wonder, Mr Blake, if you can imagine how frustrating it is, watching the legislation one has worked on for year after year endlessly eroded by one’s colleagues, for their own interests? I
was tempted, and I fell. I met with Woundy and his cohorts, that coarse little creature Blundell, and Wedderburn, who seemed meant for better things. We spoke on several occasions about how to counter the Anti-Corn-Law Leaguers and feed the starving. I was drawn into the discussions. Then they began to talk about turning the world upside down, the death of the aristocracy, their hatred of religion, the so-called temptations of revolution. They turned on me, divulging how they raised their funds. I saw I had been tricked and I took my leave amid their sneers. The drunkard Blundell arrived here a week later, demanding payment. He threatened me. He said that it would be most damaging if it was discovered that I had had dealings with former revolutionaries and sellers of lewd books. I refused to pay, of course. But he returned with Wedderburn, and they showed me the articles they proposed to print if I turned them down again. Accusing me of having dealings with physical-force Chartists, infidels and Holywell Street printers, of hypocrisy and betraying my party. It would have destroyed my work and my position. And so, in answer to your earlier questions, Captain Avery, yes, they did blackmail me, and I did pay. Twice. To my shame.’

All was silent.

‘It was not your fault,’ said Lady Agnes. ‘You were too good. Too trusting.’

‘May I ask then, Lord Allington,’ I ventured, my voice still little more than a wheeze, ‘with the new police having buried the matter, why on earth you employed us to rake it all up again?’

Allington drew a deep breath.

‘It was only a few weeks after I had made the second payment that I heard about Wedderburn’s death. And then about Blundell’s. I admit that in the moment of hearing of their terrible fates I felt relief, though I knew it was wrong of me. Then the ragged-school teacher persisted in reporting how nothing had been done. A few more questions and I learnt that the investigations into their deaths had been all but abandoned by the police. It was then that I knew God was testing me. He was telling me it was my task to ensure their murderer was found.’

‘And then there were more deaths,’ said Blake. ‘Woundy, and Thomas Dearlove, felled on the table in his school, and Woundy’s personal guard, discovered by Captain Avery and Mr Dearlove in a rookery cesspool, the night before Dearlove died. All those people dead. Woundy had a second guard, you know, who took passage to America two days after his death. Second-class ticket, paid in full in advance. Convenient, don’t you think? Keep her up, Avery. Shake her if necessary.’

I shook Matty a little and her eyes opened but she still could not speak and her breathing was laboured. I think Allington would have tried to help, had not Blake waved the gun at him. For myself, my throat burned and waves of nausea washed over me.

‘Blake,’ I wheezed, ‘she needs a doctor.’

‘She needs to be kept awake and given water. A doctor would do no other,’ he countered.

‘I am deeply sorry for Dearlove,’ Allington said. ‘I know nothing of the guard. I had nothing to do with their deaths. I swear on my life that I did not. I have harmed no one. If I had, why would I have employed you?’

‘In my experience the apparently most rational men may commit the most irrational and destructive acts. Perhaps you wish to be caught. Ask yourself how this appears. A girl drugged almost unto death hidden in your attic. My colleague attacked and bound. Why would I not suspect you?’

‘Godless man,’ said Lady Agnes. ‘Of course he is guiltless.’

‘Why did Threlfall attack me and tie me up?’ I whispered.

‘To protect His Lordship,’ said Blake. ‘You murdered those men, didn’t you, Allington? You thought them Judases, betrayers, and you despatched them as someone for whom the Bible is the fount of all counsel and inspiration would. You strangled them first, painted Blundell’s hair red and left the twigs by Woundy, then slashed their stomachs because Judas’s mouth was purified by the kiss he gave Jesus when he betrayed him, and therefore his damned soul had to depart his body through a hole in his stomach. Then you cut them and painted them with ink to show the stain of their dirty profession and their ungodly beliefs.’

‘I did none of this. You must believe me,’Allington said, almost pleading.

‘No, no, Allington, my dearest, of course it is not true,’ said Lady Agnes. She stretched out her arms to him but he ignored her. ‘Do not press him!’

‘I believe that you wished to be discovered and you want to confess,’ said Blake. ‘That is why you chose us for this: two men “incorruptible and undeflectable”. That was what you wanted. Two men who would persist when the police and the authorities turned a blind eye. You knew who I was, a non-believer with a certain reputation. The part of you that yearns for light wants to admit to it; and the part of you that is dark longs for punishment. You wanted me to catch you. You want to confess.’

Allington hid his face in his hands.

‘You are a man with dark desires, Lord Allington. You told us you are drawn to hangings. You cannot keep away from them. What is it that draws you? A guilty excitement at seeing the bodies swing? A twisted longing for punishment, or for the moment when the rope presses the air from your throat, and you are agonizingly suspended between life and death? Is that why you killed them, or was it because it was so heady an experience, and gave you such a terrible satisfaction, that you could not resist repeating it?’

‘Stop it!’ cried Lady Agnes.

Blake’s words had a horrible mesmeric power about them. I wished he would stop. Equally, there was something dreadfully crushed about Allington’s response, as if all his defences had collapsed. He lifted one arm over his head like a child defending himself from a rain of blows.

‘Captain Avery told me that you spoke to him of the abyss of your dark imaginings. About how you feel that God recedes from you, and you are left in the dark and in despair. There is a good reason for it, isn’t there? Because you are filled with dark, transgressive thoughts. And because you murdered these men.’

‘No, I could never do such things, I could never do such things,’ said Allington, and his voice broke.

‘You killed Matthew Blundell, Nat Wedderburn and Eldred
Woundy. You overcame them, strangled them, undressed them, hauled them on to their presses and then stabbed them in the stomach.’

Allington cradled his head in his hands and began to rock backwards and forwards. He uttered a long low cry as if in dreadful pain.

‘What is that but an admission?’ said Blake.

‘This is not about your pitiful accusations,’ Lady Agnes answered, pushing past Blake and taking Allington’s head in her arms. She kissed his hair and he caught her hands and pressed them to his forehead. ‘No, no, my love,’ she said tenderly. ‘You are safe. You are safe. No one will hurt you. They cannot destroy you. I shall protect you. He is pure as the lilies,’ she said to Blake contemptuously. ‘He is the sinned against, not the sinner. And besides, where is your proof? It is you, Mr Blake, who will be punished. Charged with murder, escaped from the police, forcing entry and threatening your superiors with such weapons. It is you who will hang. Make no mistake, I shall bring the full weight of this family’s influence to ensure that you suffer for it. And then you will go to hell. “The unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death
.
” Revelation 21, verse 8. That will be you.’

‘I have nothing to lose then,’ said Blake. ‘If I must hang for something I did not do, then first I will make sure that the real perpetrator is punished for it.’

Blake turned the pistol again upon Allington.

‘Blake! Please!’ I said.

‘Ah, William,’ he said wearily. ‘If there’s one thing I’ve learnt it’s that the rich and powerful usually get what they want. And I am sick to death of it. But this time it will be different. Stand up.’

Wordlessly, Allington stood.

‘Please, Blake,’ I begged. ‘There must be some other way …’

‘I’m sorry, my friend,’ he said. He cocked the pistol and took aim at Allington’s head.

Lady Agnes flung herself at him. Deftly, almost gracefully, he stepped aside, caught her by the arm and twisted her round so that he had her trapped against his waist. Again he took aim.

‘Stop!’ she cried. ‘He did not do this.
I
killed them!’

‘You would say anything to save him.’

‘You do not believe me!’ She was almost exultant. ‘Just like the others. You underestimate me. I killed them. I confess it freely! And they deserved it. Blackmailers, infidels, evil all.’

Though I had seen her pour the laudanum down Matty’s throat, a thousand objections rose in my breast. It was not possible.

‘You are right, I do not believe you,’ said Blake, but he let her go.

‘They did not suspect me, just as you did not. They depreciated me. They welcomed me into their grubby premises, rubbing their hands, but I had the advantage. Drunken, disgusting Blundell, pathetic Wedderburn, coarse, greedy Woundy. Damned, all of them. Woundy was only too happy to dismiss his guards when I said I had something private to ask of him. So easy to manage. A simple creature of base appetites.’

Allington collapsed back on to his chair. ‘Agnes?’ he said, hesitantly.

‘And how did you overcome these men who were twice as large as you? Woundy, for example: he was a big man.’

‘Why, I used the vapour.’

‘The vapour?’

‘The ether. From the hospital. On a sponge or a cloth. It renders them unconscious,’ she said. ‘Blundell was half-drunk, it was simply a matter of holding him by the arms while I pressed it on to his face. We were new to it then and spilt some. I almost passed out myself. When the body was found, a candle was brought in and everything caught alight. My arrangements were not appreciated. But I suppose it meant there was less fuss. Wedderburn needed a blow to the head while I gave him the vapour. Woundy too. He struggled. He required a blow to the head – two – then we had to put the cord round his neck while we administered the ether. Threlfall helped, of course. He always came with me. He does what he is told.’