The Fall (20 page)

He stared out the window, jaw muscles bulging. How long would it take for him to lose interest in my sharpness? When the fascination over an intellectual equal wasn’t as exotic anymore, I would surely be nothing but inappropriate.

 
‘Music can tear my heart apart,’ I explained.

He turned and looked at me, his expression gradually relaxing. As the brougham came to a halt, he finally spoke. His words, and the low hum of his voice compressed my chest. ‘Given the circumstances, my invitation was indeed too early. Forgive me.’

His change in attitude was shocking.

An hour later, Durham carried the heavy gramophone into my room, together with a recording of
Otello
. I turned the crank, placed the record on the turntable, and the needle into the groove. The buzzing and rasping of taut strings when caressed by the bow, the low hum underlying Tamagno’s voice, the vast diversity of sound underlying everything obvious and loud — flattened to a dull noise people still called music.

After I had undressed with Cecile’s help, I wrapped myself in my blanket and closed my eyes, pressing my hands against them until I saw lights pinpricking my lids. Moriarty was hungry, it was obvious. He hadn’t had a woman for a week now.

That aside, I still had a few more days to wait before I could consider my father safe at Matthias’s home in Switzerland. But first, I needed to ascertain that Holmes wouldn’t need me here any longer. There wasn’t much to find out at any rate. Moriarty did not trust me and the little information I had obtained thus far was insignificant. Warehouse locations! Honestly, what was I thinking?

— day 66 —
 

T
he two horses pawed the ground, snorting and shaking their heads. We stepped away from the brougham and walked towards the warehouse. Moriarty and I had chosen Langley Basin for its easy accessibility. Being right at the Thames’ edge sped up the re-building and permitted us to discard mule carcasses without attracting attention.
 

A barge was tethered to the bollards and building material extracted from her belly. Steam rose from workers’ mouths and intermingled with fog from the Thames — a milky soup of odours, moisture, and cold.

The Thames, London, 1896. (10)

Moriarty took my hand and stepped through the hole that would soon be a large iron door. Inside the warehouse, four men were building pens. Each would hold three mules. A small passageway separated four stalls on each side. Twenty-four animals would be sacrificed. And then another batch, and yet another.
 

I shivered, pressed the hand holding mine, and looked up at him.
 

‘You are cold. Do you wish to go back home?’ he asked.

‘The shiver was more excitement than freezing.’

He placed his palm on the small of my back and steered me through the entrance. I had to control myself, as not to inch away from him and his oppressive chivalry.

Two carpenters were pulling up the main wall separating the laboratory space from the animals’ enclosures; another three men set the windows and fastened bars. ‘Who will guard this place?’ I asked.

‘Do not worry yourself with men’s business, my dear.’

‘Men’s business? We are talking about the success or failure of
our
work. Don’t talk to me as though my sole purpose were to be decorative!’

He stopped in his tracks and snarled, ‘Four of Moran’s best men will watch over this place.’

‘Well, now I am worried!’ I cried out, but quickly lowered my voice. ‘Men carrying rifles and circling the premises will ensure publicity in a very short time.’

‘Colonel Moran is no amateur.’ He snatched my wrist and pulled me back outside.

At the water’s edge, far enough from the workers’ pricked ears, he came to a halt. ‘You dare doubt my judgement in front of those men? ’ He jabbed his finger towards the warehouse.

‘Let go of my arm.’

He dropped it, gazing at his hand that had just squeezed mine so hard it bruised.

‘My apologies,’ he said.

I jerked my chin down once, thinking what a waste of time and energy this was. His mind might accept the two of us being on eye level, but his upbringing would always revolt over a woman with more than just breadcrumbs in her head. If he constantly doubted my judgement, what influence would I ever have? There was already so little room for me to prolong our experiments, postpone tests on animals, or even sabotage the entire project. If he were to involve Moran’s men, whom I expected to be only too eager to use their guns, any freedom I hoped to have gained by moving our laboratory to this warehouse would be lost.

‘You know that I lived in St Giles for years,’ I said.

He gazed at the river, its murky water lapping at the barge, pushing and pulling her gently. Anger stained his throat, the redness rising above the scarf he wore.

‘Nothing is invisible in the slums,’ I said. ‘Nothing would escape the eyes and ears of a band of ragamuffins. Have you not seen the people eyeing us? I have counted more than twenty so far.’

‘I have seen them and I am well aware of the services they can provide. Moran’s men have been ordered to pay them. And now, I’d be ever so grateful,’ the last word was spoken with sharpness, ‘if you would let this issue go and stop suggesting that your intellect is superior to mine.’

‘I’m much too naive to suggest any such thing, even if it were the truth.’ With that I stalked off, climbed into the brougham and slammed the door shut.

About ten minutes later, he entered the carriage and ordered his coachman to drive us home.
 

‘I’d like to go to the medical school to re-inoculate our germs. If you don’t have any other plans for me, could I use Garrow to take me there, once you are back at home?’

‘I will accompany you.’

‘As you wish.’

‘Why are you nervous?’ he said without looking at me. Had my voice revealed more than I thought it should?

‘I affronted you, yet you show no anger now. And you have seen the laboratory several times, yet you wish to accompany me. I am puzzled.’

‘I wish to see Britain’s best bacteriologist at work.’

I gazed at his lips, their corners turned up in a smirk, his eyes betraying enjoyment. Whatever his intentions were, he gave me no clue.
 

We reached the medical school. He unlocked the laboratory door and held it open for me. Goff had taken a holiday while we waited for the warehouse laboratory to be finished, but he had prepared petri dishes with fresh media before his leave.

Moriarty took my hat and coat and hung them at the door. I dressed in my protective gear, wiped the workbench with grain alcohol, and disinfected my hands, too. The petri dishes were lined up, four with an
A
for anthrax and four with a
G
for glanders etched into their lids. ‘You can step closer if you wish,’ I said to him. He stood a few feet away, eyes glued to the deadly cultures that formed small dots on the surface of the dark-golden media. I wanted him close, to get used to his proximity. ‘As long as you don’t touch anything, you are safe. Germs don’t jump.’

Anthrax bacilli and blood cells, illustration by Dr Robert Koch, 1880 (11)

With a
woof
the Bunsen burner ignited. I held a metal lancet into its flame, just above the hottest blue.
 

‘The heat of the flame forces the air to rise, making it safe for me to leave the pure cultures out in the open for a while. Dust and contaminating germs cannot fall down into the petri dishes. Instead, they are swept up with the rising hot air.’ I opened a petri dish containing glanders cultures and stuck the lancet into the gelatin, producing a hiss.

 
‘The metal lancet is sterilised in the flame and then used to pick part of a pure culture.’ I stuck the tip of the lancet into the white, rippled surface of a glanders colony, opened a fresh petri dish, and drew sweeping lines over the entire area of the media. I repeated the procedure three times, then disinfected my hands and switched to our anthrax cultures. Ten minutes later, I turned off the flame, wiped my workbench and my hands again, and finally washed them with water, all the while observing Moriarty’s fascination from the corner of my eye.

‘Very intriguing,’ he noted and went to get my coat, hat, and gloves for me. ‘I wish you would address me with my given name.’ His gaze held mine, and the first thing that hit my brain was that the one week was not over yet and that I still had to talk to Holmes. Time and Moriarty were working against me.

‘James, then?’ I said timidly.

‘James,’ he confirmed.

Back inside the carriage I tested the amount of freedom he would allow me. ‘James? I’d very much like to take a walk in the park, any park for that matter. I have been… inside for too long.’ Not to say
locked up
. ‘I’ll take Cecile with me, I am certain she would enjoy it.’

And to my utter surprise, he nodded. ‘Garrow will accompany you. Two ladies shouldn’t be walking about by themselves.’

‘Of course not. Can we go tomorrow morning, or do you need your coachman?’

‘Tomorrow would be fine with me.’ He bent forward and pressed my hand.

‘I wish I could see him,’ Cecile whispered. She had just brought the last load of coals for the night, extracted a letter from her apron pocket, and sat down next to me. It was her third message and I could guess the contents. Her lines were sweet, with a pleading undertone. His were respectful and warm, yet cautioning her not to raise the suspicion of their master. I had told him about the colour of her cheeks when she received his dictated notes, which had put a boyish smile on his face. They had both grown dear to me and I thought they would make a good couple. But this whole business gave me a stomachache. I would not reveal my plans of bringing down their employer. Warning them was out of the question. Whether they’d lose their assignment due to flirting with each other, or by my hand around their master’s throat, was, at the end, not important. But what would happen to them afterwards? Perhaps I could find a way to help.
 

I pushed the thought aside for now, winked at her, and smirked mischievously.