Avery & Blake 02 - The Infidel Stain (47 page)

Threlfall brought his hand up to his mouth. ‘No!’ he said. ‘It is not true.’

‘As for the little school-teacher, he weighed nothing. Barely two breaths and he was unconscious.’

‘Why did you do it, Lady Agnes?’ said Blake.

‘Allington is a bright shining star,’ she said, as if surprised. ‘Nothing can be allowed to compromise him. They betrayed him, they tried to tarnish him, they threatened his reputation. They thought they had him. I could not allow it. And they were nothing. Who will miss them? Creatures of the gutter who had already damned themselves.’

‘And why bother with all your “arrangements”, as you call them?’

‘Why
bother
?’ She looked puzzled. ‘They were Judases. It was how it had to be.’

A short silence while Blake contemplated this.

‘And how, madam, may I ask, did you ensure the deaths would not be investigated?’

‘Why, we are related to the highest in the land. Allington is too good to understand such things, but I knew that I could make sure that the police turned a blind eye to the matter without revealing who was being protected or who had asked for it.’

‘You forgive me if I seem unconvinced.’

‘I took tea some weeks ago with Sir James Graham, the Home Secretary. He is a cousin several times removed. I took an aunt, quite deaf, with me as a chaperone. I told him confidentially, and with a maidenly blush, that I must impart something that had been discovered in the course of our charitable works. A printer from Seven Dials had recently died in mysterious circumstances and he, along with several other unsalubrious booksellers, had been supplying shocking and lewd material to certain high-ranking members of the Cabinet, including one very prominent member whose intimate relations with these men were so disreputable that they would instantly cast a terrible slur on the government. This, of course, was not true. All Blundell’s papers had burnt in the fire and the police had shown very little inclination to look into his death. But Sir James had no reason to disbelieve me. I am a very honest person, and he has come to regard my brother and I as experts on the matters of factory hours, child education and the condition of the poorest. He immediately ordered that the police give a wide berth to those particular booksellers. And when Wedderburn perished—’

‘When you killed him.’

‘I wrote to the Home Secretary again, letting him know that he had almost certainly met his end as a result of some low rookery feud, but that investigation into his death might bring to light his association with those members of the Cabinet. And so once again he let it be known that the police should not devote too much attention to their deaths.’ She smiled, as if well satisfied with her work.

‘And when Woundy died,’ Blake said, ‘the seed was so well established you did not need to say anything. It did not occur to you that the order to abandon the investigation of the murders might have come about because Graham assumed that you were trying to protect your brother, rather than nameless “members of the Cabinet”? That you have inadvertently raised suspicions at the top of the government about your brother?’

‘Why no,’ she said, frowning.

‘It certainly made it a harder task for us,’ Blake said almost conversationally. ‘The police suspected Woundy and the others were tied in with the Chartists and their plot. They assumed that the order to look the other way was about the plot. It left us most confused.’

The idea seemed to give her some satisfaction.

‘I assume you searched Woundy’s office after you killed him,’ said Blake. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’

‘Woundy’s ledger with all the names in it? Yes. I found it, and I had Threlfall burn it.’

‘And Woundy’s bruisers?’

‘Woundy’s guards? I was not sure how much they might have seen. I sent Threlfall to arrange for them to take passage to America. One went, the other did not. He was warned, he did not listen. Threlfall found a fellow to perform the act and dispose of the body.’

Threlfall bridled. ‘This is not true!’ he whined.

‘Then the school-teacher came to me after he found the guard’s body. He had the temerity to ask me to pray with him! He did not know everything but he had begun to guess, for we had asked him how to go about finding someone in the rookery. He was thoroughly too close to the whole matter. No one would have seen that Blundell and Wedderburn were tied together if he had not said so.’

‘But he was a good, devout man.’

‘I may be the weaker vessel, but I am a very capable woman,’ she said, ‘and I do not shrink from what must be done to protect my darling.’ She laid her hand on Allington’s arm.

He pulled away from her. ‘Agnes, what have you done?’ he said.

Matty sagged in my arms. I shook her, but her eyes had closed and I could not get her to open them.

There came the thud of feet up the stairs.

‘We are saved! The police have come for you, Mr Blake,’ said Lady Agnes.

‘But you confessed!’ I said.

‘Oh, Captain Avery, I was merely marking time. Who do you think they will believe?’

Sergeant Loin and a band of constables burst through the door. Blake tossed the pistol on the floor, but they fell upon him anyway, beating him with their truncheons.

‘Stop!’ I cried, my voice still weak and hoarse.

‘Thank the Lord you are here, Officer,’ Lady Agnes said, her hand fluttering around her neck, her eyes wide. ‘You have saved us!’

‘Are you hurt, madam? Is His Lordship quite well?’ said Loin.

‘We are quite unharmed, Officer,’ Lady Agnes said, ‘but my brother is deeply shocked. That man stood not a foot away from him and held a pistol to his head. He would have shot him if you had not arrived.’

The constables dragged Blake up roughly by his arms. There was a ripe red smear on his cheek and his nose was bloody.

‘Leave him be!’ I said. ‘She confessed, Loin, Lady Agnes, she confessed to killing them all, with the servant, Threlfall. It was her. They knocked me unconscious. See where my wrists were bound.’

Loin looked at me and Matty. We made a strange picture.

‘I am sorry, Officer,’ Lady Agnes said. ‘Captain Avery is quite under the spell of Mr Blake. He would say anything to save him. Is it not true, Threlfall?’

Threlfall nodded, a little sullenly. ‘He is not to be trusted.’

‘What is wrong with the girl?’ Loin said.

‘They poured half a bottle of laudanum down her throat,’ I
croaked. ‘I have it here. She saw Lord Allington at Nat Wedderburn’s when he came to pay them off. Lady Agnes intended to silence her. She must see a doctor.’

‘The child is an opium eater,’ said Lady Agnes calmly. ‘She cannot control her appetites. We were trying to help her. I fear it may be too late.’

‘That is a lie!’ I said.

Loin looked between Lady Agnes, sister of a viscount, daughter of an earl, and me, and made up his mind.

‘On your feet, Blake,’ he said. ‘I am sorry you have had to suffer this ordeal, Your Lordship, My Lady.’ He bowed.

Blake could hardly stand. He struggled for breath. ‘You are a monster, Lady Agnes Bertram Vickers,’ he said with great calm, his voice hardly above a whisper.

I think Loin would have struck him, but saw that he would probably never have risen again.

‘But I was right about Judas, wasn’t I?’

Lady Agnes smiled gently. ‘Mr Blake appears to have an obsession with the story of Judas’s betrayal and the superstitions that surround it, Officer.’ She sounded almost sorrowful. ‘You will find, I think, that he employed details from these stories when he committed his terrible crimes: red paint signifying Judas’s red hair, elder twigs to signify the tree on which Judas hanged himself. And of course, the thirty half-crowns.’

I was shocked at her audacity. ‘Allington, please!’ I implored. But His Lordship would not meet my eyes.

Blake did an extraordinary thing. He laughed aloud.

‘I never said anything about thirty half-crowns, Lady Agnes. Only Matty Horner, Avery, me, and Loin, whom I told not three hours ago, knew about them. And the killer. And I never mentioned the twigs were elder.’

‘Everyone knows that Judas sold our Lord for thirty pieces of silver,’ she said.

‘Avery stinks of ether, Loin,’ Blake said. ‘Keep the candle away from him.’

Loin did an odder thing. He came to the bed, leant towards me
and sniffed. He paused, then waved his hand and two of his constables took hold of Lady Agnes.

‘And the servant too,’ he said.

Threlfall began to shake. ‘I did nothing wrong!’ he shouted. ‘She forced me to do it!’

Matty was still unconscious when I got her to Dean Street. I had no idea what to do with her save to get her somewhere safe and sheltered. The admirable Miss Jenkins saw us and immediately insisted she be put to bed in her own lodgings. The doctor who attended advised that Matty be closely observed to see whether the drug had affected her heart or her mind, and whether she had developed a craving for it. He recommended a nurse whom I engaged, and left a small bottle of laudanum lest she became dangerously agitated or worsened.

O’Toole, unsurprisingly, had disappeared.

Blake limped into Dean Street not long afterwards. His face was a grim patchwork of old and new bruises, and when he coughed he held his ribs. He told me that Loin had been rankled by his orders to look the other way, and knew perfectly well that he was innocent. He gave Blake three minutes to make his case. Blake had told him about the thirty half-crowns and his suspicion that Lady Agnes Vickers had used ether to render her victims unconscious before she killed them – and indeed it was what Threlfall had used upon me.

Unsurprisingly, Loin had been sceptical. As far as Blake knew, no doctor in the country had actually used ether thus, but Dearlove was still in the deadhouse and Loin agreed to visit the body and smell it, and Blake reminded him that Woundy too had had a strange odour. He told Loin that Lady Agnes was one of a handful of people who knew about the power of ether because of her position at the Whitechapel hospital, where a doctor had wanted to experiment with it. It was, he had discovered, not hard to purchase from certain druggists, for small quantities went into many tonics. And it was dangerously flammable, which explained why Blundell’s house had burned after the murder.

Loin had struck a bargain. In return for the details of the Chartist plot – Beniofsky and his men were arrested not long after – Blake could have an hour of freedom to pursue his case. After three hours he had still not returned, and so Loin had come after him.

I asked Blake when he had realized that Agnes Vickers was his quarry. He said that it had come to him gradually: the smell of the ether on Woundy and Dearlove, her mention of the Whitechapel doctor’s desire to introduce the vapour to help with the pain of childbirth, then Matty’s disappearance, and finally Heffernan’s admission that he had introduced Allington to Woundy.

I told him I had thought he was truly about to shoot Allington.

He gave me his inscrutable look.

‘She had to admit it willingly,’ he said. ‘I could not have her say I had forced a confession from her. It would never have stuck.’

‘How far would you have gone if she had not?’

‘I do not know,’ he said.

That night Blake wrote to Charlie Neesom, informing him of Lady Agnes’s confession and asking that Daniel Wedderburn might now go and see his mother. Neesom had evaded arrest but was being watched by the new police. We agreed to visit Connie Wedderburn in the morning, and then Taylor to see if we could persuade him to sanction Pen’s release.

‘You will not tell me why you are so optimistic he will agree?’

‘Let it be a surprise,’ he said. I could not summon the effort to argue.

We found Connie Wedderburn with Daniel and the children. They had already heard the news and she was wreathed in smiles. Blake gave a careful account of what we had discovered, and gave great credit to Matty.

‘Beniofsky and a good number of his men have been arrested,’ he added. ‘But Daniel is safe, for the time being.’

She thanked him extravagantly, telling him he had saved the family. She looked as handsome as I had ever seen her. ‘Can I ask
you one more favour?’ she said. ‘A considerable one. Tell Daniel what you know about Nat.’

Blake cleared his throat and looked exceedingly awkward. She asked him again, and it seemed to me she tossed her hair in such a way that made it hard for a man to refuse. He agreed. I went to play with the children, who, regarding me owlishly as always, patiently taught me their dice game and relieved me of half a crown.

Before Blake ended, Daniel had begun to wipe his eyes.

‘Why did you keep it from me?’ he said to his mother.

‘I made Nat promise to give it all up. I had seen so much lost in pursuit of our cause, and children suffering because of it. He wanted to tell you, but I would not have it. I wish with all my heart I had let him.’

The boy fell into his mother’s embrace and the other children surged about them, holding on to whatever piece of skirt or trouser they could reach.

Connie Wedderburn took Blake’s hand and held it, smiling steadily into his face. Daniel fidgeted. Blake detached himself gently and she followed him to the door.