The Aylesford Skull (41 page)

THE KING OF THE DAFT

P
lease, sir, no more of your histrionics,” Lord Moorgate said. “I find them tedious in the extreme, and I’m anxious to be away.

I came here desiring to bring some sensible conclusion to last night’s abortive meeting. But now I find myself no further along and half a day wasted and having been shot at into the bargain. The boy has run off once again due to your stupidity, or something worse. You’ve failed me, Doctor, and I have half a mind to abandon you.”

They stood in the cellar once again, Lord Moorgate, Helen, and Narbondo, the three of them alone, Narbondo’s men dispersed – some of them searching the countryside, some of them loading barrels aboard the freshly painted steam launch.

“What’s in the other half of your mind, Lord Moorgate? As is true of you and your associates, I have far too much invested in the project to see it abandoned now because of your suspicions and timidity.”

“I warn you that you sail dangerously close to the wind when you accuse me of timidity, sir – a man to whom you owe your life, unless of course your life was never in danger in the first place. The lunatic with the pistol, after all, shot at me, not at you.” He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “The salient point is that I’ll find it impossible to explain to my business associates that the assurance I promised them has run away into the marsh. They’re impatient men, Doctor, and quite unhappy to throw good money after bad. Your own head will be forfeit; depend upon it.”

“What you explain to your business associates is of no concern to me,” Narbondo said. He smiled at Helen, who seemed to be listening keenly. “Unless of course the beautiful Helen is one of those associates. In that case my concern is very nearly boundless.”

“You jest once again, but to your own peril, sir. My suspicions are justified, I find. It’s remarkable that you clearly anticipated the appearance of the lunatic with the pistol just now. As you no doubt know, that same man attacked me on the street last night after I left your apartment in Spitalfields. Now here he is again, like the ghost at the feast, but carrying a pistol. He threatens to murder you, but was that his intent?”

“I anticipated his arrival because one of my men intercepted a missive that revealed his approach. He shot at you, it seems to me, because you shot him. I have no idea why he attacked you in London. I don’t care a groat for your suspicions.”

“Then I’ll come to the point. I’m willing to proceed, but on the condition that you supply the balance of the money that de Groot will pay to our man in the War Office. Then we’re equally invested in the project’s success. When you’ve finished your work with the boy’s skull and demonstrate its effectiveness, we’ll repay you. And don’t pretend that you’re not in funds, Doctor. I’m aware that you have a very deep purse.”

Narbondo nodded. “You bargain like a Scotsman, sir. But answer me this: why shouldn’t I cut your throat at once and take your money?”

“You’re not daft enough to think that I have the money with me?”

“To the contrary, I’m the very king of the daft, sir. I wonder whether Helen knows where the money lies, and whether she would betray you.”

“I might,” Helen said promptly. “I will be the one to deliver the money to de Groot. Lord Moorgate intends to be in York tomorrow morning, innocently visiting his cousin.”

“Which is entirely sensible,” Moorgate said to Narbondo. He turned to Helen and said, “You’d be wise to remain silent, Helen. I tell you this for your own good.”

“And what else has he promised you for your own good, my dear, now that your head is also in the noose? I don’t say what has he
given
to you, because our Lord Moorgate seems to be a man of promises, which are very like wind, when you come to think of it. Look at this, my lady.” Narbondo plucked a gold ring from the little finger of his right hand, displaying it in his open palm as he handed it to Helen, who gazed at it with evident appreciation and lust. It was an immense, jet-black pearl set in gold. The pearl had been hidden, turned backward in Narbondo’s hand until this moment. “A token of my esteem,” he said to her. “I possess another of the same, set in a necklace with diamonds.”

“You waste your breath,” Moorgate said. “Come, Helen, return the bauble to the Doctor. We’re finished here.”

Helen looked at Moorgate as if she weren’t at all finished, her eyes as black as the pearls that Narbondo offered to her. In that instant, having made up his mind about her, Narbondo sprang forward, his knife in his hand, the same knife that had dispatched Mary Eastman, and others before her. He swept the blade across Moorgate’s throat, and then at once fell back to avoid the spray of blood.

“Yes,” he said, “finished indeed.”

Moorgate’s eyes remained wide open in surprise. His crimson breath bubbled out of his throat, which he touched now with a palsied hand, toppling to his knees, pressing his hand more forcefully, trying to breathe and to staunch the flow of blood.

“Keep the bauble or return it, as you wish,” Narbondo said to Helen. “I have an entertaining suggestion, however, that will profit us both. You might want to hear it before you decide.” He gestured at Lord Moorgate. “There is always a choice, you see.”

THIRTY-FOUR

UNCLE GILBERT’S ENCAMPMENT

T
he airship floated some six feet above the flat, sandy sward near Gilbert Frobisher’s vast Arabian tent – several tents, actually, as well as sun shades with their sides furled to let the sometimes considerable breeze slip through. The ship was moored fore and aft and along either side with heavy rope, long wooden stakes set deeply in the well-packed sand. A ladder made of rope and with wooden treads dangled from the open gondola door – more a gate than a door – the excess ladder piled on the ground.

A line of high dunes separated the encampment from the shore of Egypt Bay, the tent quite invisible from a boat on the water or from the track along the edge of the bay. St. Ives was inclined to think that this accounted for the fact that the extravagant and lonesome outpost hadn’t been robbed and ravaged by Narbondo’s men or other bands of river pirates and smugglers. The cooking smoke would have been visible, of course, but a single traveler with a simple campfire could account for cooking smoke.

St. Ives considered the company roundabout him as he sat drinking tea and eating toasted muffins and strawberries. They were awaiting the arrival of Jack, Tubby, and Doyle, but the day was wearing on, St. Ives growing more anxious as the minutes passed, minutes that he kept track of by repeatedly conferring with his pocket watch. He had no right to ask it, but he badly wanted help with his likely assault on the surprisingly large company of cutthroats they’d seen from the airship when it passed over the infamous Shade House an hour back. Merton’s map had named the inn, although unnecessarily, for its reputation as an old smugglers’ outpost had been the stuff of legend.

Gilbert, who was the image of his nephew, easily as stout but with the hair gone from the top of his head and wearing heavy spectacles, had brought his valet with him, a man named Barlow, tall and fit and evidently competent, but with his ankle splinted and wrapped and propped on a settee. He had sprained it two days ago when he stepped into a rabbit hole. There was also an old birding acquaintance of Gilbert’s named Mr. Hodgson, who was small and bandy-legged, although active, it appeared, for a man getting well along in years. He was taken up with the study of a surprisingly wide array of eggs and feathers and nests laid out upon tables, blue and pink and speckled eggs sitting comfortably in their requisite nests. He was so taken up with them, in fact, that he scarcely spoke, but was a slave to his collection, writing away in a notebook while sitting at a wide, wooden desk, leaping up to gaze at the particular construction of a nest or the shape of an egg and then returning to the notebook.

There was a cook, too, named Madame Leseur, a wide-bodied woman who spoke Frenchified English, and who worked her marvels within a kitchen enclosure that included an iron stove, broad chopping blocks, hencoops, and cabinets. She had heavily muscled arms and stout legs, as if she had spent her life carrying hod rather than cooking. Somehow she had contrived to bake bread, and several long loaves stood in a wire basket. A brace of pheasants hung overhead along with a ham, several wrapped cheeses, and bundles of herbs. She was filleting a fish at the moment with a wickedly thin knife, and there was a ragout of lamb in the oven that smelled good enough to draw boats in off the Thames. Wood smoke rose from the stovepipe, straight upward into the still air.

Gilbert had hired a company from Gravesend to transport the crated-up encampment, including books and spirits and feather beds and other civilized necessities, and to set the bivouac up, dig and enclose the privy, and return at three-day intervals with meat and green-stuff and fruit brought fresh from the orchards of Kent. Gilbert supplemented the stores with game, the pheasants being an example.

There was nothing wrong with shooting a bird now and then, Gilbert told St. Ives and Hasbro, showing them his new birding rifle. “An Anson and Deeley,” he said proudly, “what they call a ‘boxlock.’ It’s the very latest thing, Professor. Internal hammers, self-cocking. You flush the bird, bring up the gun, and pull the trigger on the instant as smoothly as kiss-my-hand. Scarcely sporting, you’ll say, but if you had eaten Madame Leseur’s cookery, you’d think differently.”

Of the present company, only Barlow would have any business taking part in the sort of activity that St. Ives had planned – an all-out assault – but of course he could do no such thing laid up as he was. There would be no gainsaying Uncle Gilbert, however, which was worrisome, since Gilbert was dangerously high-spirited and spontaneous. He had helped to save St. Ives’s life some time back, and so St. Ives could not decently deny him a part in the coming raid, but he feared the result, the old man having Tubby’s dangerous habit of putting himself in the way of trouble. Gilbert was given to a much higher pitch of excitement than his nephew, however, which tended to scatter the old man’s wits.

St. Ives lost track of the substance of the conversation roundabout him, his mind adrift, and was visited suddenly by a clear, sun-lit vision of his home, as if he were standing in the wisteria alley – spring flowers in bloom, the hops growing, Eddie and Cleo’s laughter on the breeze. He felt his heart beating heavily in his chest. Not trusting himself to speak, he stood up for the third time since they had arrived and walked out past the airship, carrying his telescope, up the side of the dune to where he had an overview of the bay. It was a glorious summer day in virtually every regard – the sun on the water, a living, nourishing warmth to the air, the sky a deep blue – and yet he cared nothing for it, and he could scarcely remember the quality of joy that he took in such things even a few days ago. He thought of Alice, missing her to an unsettling degree. He shut his eyes, shook his head, and made an effort to clear his mind of all sentiment, simply for the sake of his sanity. Opening his eyes again, he surveyed the expanse of water with his telescope, discovering that nothing had changed in the last half hour.

A swerve of shore hid much of the southern reaches of the bay, which was just as well; he and Narbondo were mutually invisible from each other. He looked out toward the inlet to the bay where the hilly ground blocked the view of the Thames and saw a line of smoke now that canted back upriver – a steam launch, almost certainly coming round into the bay, given the behavior of the smoke. He waited impatiently, and minutes later it was visible: a small launch heading straight toward him, damnably slowly, it seemed to St. Ives. The smoke from Madame Leseur’s stove no doubt made their whereabouts clear. St. Ives hurried back into the encampment and announced the arrival, returning with Gilbert and Hasbro to the edge of the bay.

His three friends were ferried ashore in a scow that had been towing behind the launch. Their gear consisted mainly of two wooden crates with the stamp of Gleeson’s Mercantile burned into the sides – Tubby’s idea, no doubt, and very civilized of him, although it was coals to Newcastle, certainly, given Gilbert’s provisions. St. Ives had no notion of remaining long enough to open a crate. He had rarely been so alive with the desire to act, and rarely so frustrated of the opportunity. The scow ran up onto the shore at last, Tubby handed a sum of money to the man at the oars, and the three companions stepped overside onto the sand. Hasbro and Jack carried away the larger crate between them, and Tubby manhandled the smaller, introducing Uncle Gilbert to Doyle, pointing out to his uncle that he already knew Jack, which lead to a riot of hand-shaking and recollection, and then Tubby walked away with his uncle, the two of them looking like the Tweedle brothers as they made their way up the dunes.