End of the Century (25 page)

It was unfortunate that Blank's form of mesmerism could not induce anyone to do something they would not otherwise be willing to do, and while the conductor worked all day surrounded by the dead, it was quickly evident that no amount of thrumming or persuasion would be sufficient to convince him to lay hands on a corpse. It fell to Blank, then, to do the dirty work himself.

The smell of corruption already rose from the corpse, now two days dead. Removing his jacket and rolling his shirt sleeves up past the elbow, Blank closed his mouth shut tight and leaned in, working his hands beneath the body, one beneath the thigh and one beneath the shoulder, and as gently as he was able rolled the body up and onto its side. Immediately the smell of putrefaction and decay worsened, as the gore-soaked tatters at the back of the man's shirt, vest, and jacket were displayed. The fabric was stained black with dried blood, obscuring some details, but it was evident that something sharp had sliced through all of the layers of clothing laterally, cutting cleanly from one side of the man's abdomen to the other.

Continuing to work the corpse's bulk forward, Blank managed to roll it further over, until the dead man was now lying face down. His right arm had worked itself loose and now folded indecorously behind his back, but Blank was able to tuck it up under the body, giving him an unobstructed view of the back. He was relatively sure the dead man wouldn't mind.

With the tip of a penknife, Blank peeled back the neatly sheared edge of the fabric and peered at the rent flesh beneath. It was as if a new, impossibly wide mouth had grown in the man's back, a smile that ran straight across the back and seemed to curve up as the sides sloped down and away. This was a trick of perspective, and when seen level, it was perfectly, inexorably straight. In the course of the postmortem, and later under the mortician's care, the body had been cleaned, so that the bulk of the blood and viscera had been cleaned away. What remained was gray, lifeless flesh and the darker meat of viscera within. The white of bone glinted where the vertebrae had been neatly severed in twain.

Blank moved from the man's back to investigate the rest of the body. He checked the soles of his shoes, checked the fingertips and palms, looked in his mouth, and peered into his ears. He made as thorough an examination as the circumstances allowed, while Miss Bonaventure perched atop a nearby coffin and watched, only half interested. The conductor had quickly excused himself and left them to their own devices.

“Well?” Miss Bonaventure said, when Blank straightened up and wiped his hands as clean as possible on his handkerchief. “What have you found?”

“The only detail of immediate relevancy that presents itself is the fact that this man was most definitely dispatched with the same sort of cutting implement that felled the three previous murder victims and that which was used to severe the lock at the blind asylum. Beyond that?” He held his hands out to either side in a shrug. “Who can say? There are perhaps more questions than answers to be found here. Why was this victim a male while the others had been female, and why was this one killed in the apparent act of fleeing, and out in the open no less, while the others had been dispatched in secret places and on much more intimate terms?”

“There is one question I'd very much like to have answered, myself,” Miss Bonaventure said, kicking her heels against the sides of the wooden casket.

“And that is?”

“Just who was this Xenophon Brade, anyway?”

Blank fixed her with a smile. “Miss Bonaventure, I believe you've been reading my thoughts. That was precisely the next question on my list.”

Blank bathed, washing the smell of corruption from his hands and arms, while Miss Bonaventure availed herself of the opportunity to catch a brief catnap on the divan in the library. When he had seen to his toilet and dressed, Blank joined her in the library, and while she still slumbered pulled down editions of
Whitaker's
from the shelf and consulted social registers,
Who's Who
, and an encyclopedia of reference. By the time Miss Bonaventure awoke, feeling at least marginally rested and refreshed, Blank had compiled a précis on the late Mr. Xenophon Brade.

“Xenophon Brade,” Blank intoned, only occasionally forced to consult his notes, “born the son of a solicitor in Wolverhampton, 13 March, 1870. His father later moved the family to London, where young Xenophon attended school. Mrs. Brade died due to complications in childbirth when Xenophon was a boy, leaving his father a widower and he himself an only child. The elder Brade himself passed on while young Xenophon was still in school, bequeathing the boy a small sum. Xenophon left school and found work in the Clerkenwell District Surveyor's office. His passion, however, was for art, and he devoted his free time to acquiring the skills necessary to earn a living in the arts. He used what little remained of his inheritance to attend classes at Hubert Herkomer's private art school in Bushey. He became well known in Holywell Street, where the stalls of honest booksellers that line the thoroughfare obscure the discreet unmarked doors of the pornographers and publishers of
curiosa
. It was in one of these bookshops that he met a publisher who commissioned Xenophon to illustrate a book of salacious poems in translation, which he would publish in a limited edition. The book, and its illustration, met with the approval of the buying public, though the opprobrium of the authorities, and Xenophon and the publisher embarked on a series of projects, to varying degrees of success. I have here in my library, should you care to see it, a collection of myths and legends of the French province of Varadeaux with accompanying illustrations by Brade, which is why the name seemed so persistently familiar, while I could never place it. In any event, as his work found an increasing audience, Xenophone himself found entrée into society. By the time he had his first gallery show at the Grosvenor, he had taken rooms at the Albany off Piccadilly and joined a number of clubs and organizations, most notably”—and here Blank was forced to consult his notes—“the Fabian Society, the Society for Psychical Research, and the League of the Round Table. The reviews indicate that after a prolific period of years early in the decade, he has been much less productive in recent years, with only a handful of commissions seeing print and no new gallery shows to speak of. Whether his attentions were elsewhere is unknown, but it has been speculated in some quarters that he has instead been working on a large project, the nature and scope of which Xenophon refused to discuss, or the existence of which he would not confirm.”

Blank left off, leaning against a desk, his arms folded across his chest.

“And that's it?” Miss Bonaventure asked.

Blank nodded.

“A pretty piece of information gathering,” Miss Bonaventure said, admiringly. “Just how long
was
I asleep, anyway?” She sipped a steaming cup of tea. “Now, I know the Fabian Society. Socialists. Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Annie Besant, that lot. But I've never heard of the other two clubs. The Society of…
Psychical
Research, was it?”

Blank confirmed with his notes. “Yes. And the League of the Round Table.”

“I've not heard of either of those, I'm afraid.”

Blank nodded. “The Round Table bunch is new to me, as well, but I've run across the Psychical Research crew before. They're a group that believes it's possible to send messages directly to people's minds, without recourse to speaking or written communication.”

“Telepathy?” Miss Bonaventure scoffed. “Bunkum. Doesn't exist.”

Blank smiled knowingly for a moment, as if laughing inwardly at some private joke, and then nodded, slowly. “Naturally,” he said, amused. “But nevertheless, the rolls of their membership include Lord Tennyson, Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, and the film maker George Albert Smith.” Blank picked up the most recent edition of
Whitaker's
from the desk, flipping it open to a marked page. “Presently, the society is headquartered at 14 Dean's Yard, Westminster, the personal residence of Frank Podmore, an address about which there are two points of interest, one trivial and one potentially less so. First, that same residence had at one time been the first official headquarters of the Fabian Society.”

Miss Bonaventure raised an eyebrow. “Suggesting that socialists are more likely to believe in thought transmission?”

“Possibly,” Blank said with a smile, “or indicative of the fact that Mr. Podmore might have an affinity for hopeless causes. The other point of note, possibly much less trivial in nature, is that Dean's Yard is only a short distance away from the intersection of Abingdon and Great College streets.”

Now both of Miss Bonaventure's eyebrows lifted, and she leaned forward in her chair. “The intersection where Xenophon's body was found.”

“Got it in one, Miss Bonaventure.” Blank slapped the book shut. “Would you care to accompany me in paying Mr. Podmore an early evening visit?”

Miss Bonaventure jumped from her chair, eyes flashing with the thrill of the hunt. “Why, Blank, I would be delighted!”

A hansom cab carried them through the late afternoon traffic, as clerks and shopkeepers completed their day's work and scurried off to see to their various needs before sleep overtook them. South past Trafalgar, through Charing Cross and Whitehall, past Downing Street, and into the lengthening shadow of the houses of Parliament. They turned off Broad Sanctuary and south towards Dean's Yard.

They passed the Westminster Column, erected to the memory of pupils of Westminster School who had died in the Russian and Indian wars some forty years before, and passed under the arch into Dean's Yard itself. It was near time for dinner, though sunset was still hours away, and students lounged in the warm sunshine on the green, or sheltered in the shade of the larger trees, the London planes, the red horse-chestnut, the maple, the sycamore.

Dean's Yard was bordered on the south side by the Church House, on the north by the archway to the Great Sanctuary, and by the collegiate buildings of Westminster, school and abbey, on the east and west. In amongst the buildings of Westminster were a number of private residences. It was here that Henry Purcell had died, shortly after composing his anthem for Queen Mary's funeral, and was buried a short distance away, under the organ at Westminster Abbey. And it was here that they found Number 14, Dean's Yard, the residence of one Mr. Frank Podmore.

When he answered his door, Podmore looked as if he might have been weeping, his eyes red-rimmed, his cheeks flushed. He was dressed in a brocade waistcoat and shirt sleeves, his cravat all askew, and his neatly trimmed hair seemed tussled and unkempt. He had a full dark beard and mustache, well groomed but so bushy that his mouth was almost completely obscured, with only a hint of his lower lip visible as he voiced certain consonant sounds.

“Yes?” Podmore asked, standing in the doorway. “What is it you want?”

Blank produced one of his featureless calling cards and made their introductions, and in short order the three of them, Blank, Miss Bonaventure, and Podmore, were seated in his library, having tea.

Podmore was some forty years old, an official at the post office in St. Martin's Lane, but there was little in his residence that suggested the dry and dusty life of a dedicated civil servant. On a Florentine table beside a well-stuffed chair were spread back issues of
The Idler
and
The Savoy
, and a neat stack of clothbound volumes of
The Yellow Book
of recent vintage, suggesting distinctly modern tastes. On the wall, between two towering and crowded bookshelves, was a framed certificate, indicating that Podmore had graduated first in his class in Science, at Pembroke College, Oxford. And in a place of prominence, on the opposite wall, was a pen-and-ink drawing in a gilt frame behind glass.

The drawing caught Blank's eye on entering. It seemed to depict Podmore in the role of Merlin, bushy beard and flowing robes, in a style reminiscent of the medievalism found in the work of Morris and Burne-Jones blended with the Orientalism of Beardsley. At first glance, Blank had taken it to be the work of Aubrey Beardsley himself, but on closer examination it was evident that it was the work of another hand, instead. Seating himself in the overstuffed chair while Podmore fetched them tea, he happened to notice that the copies of
The Idler
and
The Savoy
in evidence shared in common cover illustrations that appeared to be done by the same hand. Blank picked up the volume of
The Yellow Book
from the top of the stack and leafed through the pages, not surprised to discover several full-page and spot illustrations by the same artist. A glance at the indicia identified the artist as one Xenophon Brade.