Ghosts by Gaslight (43 page)

“So you admit it—you were following me. May I ask why?”

“I hoped it might prove less of an embarrassment if I pressed my business with you away from the confines of the club.”

This shamed me, since I was a snob by association and not by nature; yet I maintained a cool manner. “I’m unaware of any business between us.”

“That remains to be seen. I require the services of an alienist for a day or two. If you come with me to Saint Nichol, I will double your usual fee.”

My interest was piqued, but I had concerns. “Tonight? At this hour?”

“If you fear for your safety, let me assure you that at no hour of day or night is Saint Nichol markedly less perilous.” A smile touched the corners of his mouth and I had the idea that it was a mocking smile. “While I cannot guarantee with absolute certainty that you will survive the experience,” he went on, “I swear that you will be as safe in my company in Saint Nichol as you would be on any other street in London.”

I hesitated and, apparently attributing my hesitancy to greed, Richmond said, “Name your price, then. I will gladly pay it.”

“Money is not at issue,” I told him. “Mental ailments—and I presume this is why you have sought me out, to treat such an ailment—are not easily corrected. I am no carpenter who can repair your steps or patch a hole in your roof in a few hours.”

“I do not expect you to effect a cure, simply to give me your counsel.”

“On what subject? Is there a patient you wish me to observe?”

“Two. Myself and one other.”

I started to speak, but he said, “You have questions for me. That I understand. And I intend to answer them. But my answers, insufficient as they are, will be far more revealing in light of what I have to show you.”

Without waiting to learn whether or not I would accept his invitation (I fully intended to accept, seduced by the air of mystery attaching to it), he produced a silver whistle from his coat and sounded a blast. A coach and pair lurched into view at the end of the lane, wheels and hooves raising a clatter. At that distance, rendered featureless and distorted by the fog, it posed an indistinct black mass against the diffuse yellow light, and the coachman’s bulky figure, established in vague silhouette, seemed a projection of that blackness, the crude semblance of half a man. I climbed into the coach with no little trepidation, its aspect having brought to mind a Turner seascape I had long admired, not as regards its particulars, but relating to the sinister mood suggested by its depiction of a numinous fiery light smothered beneath lowering grim clouds.

T
O REACH
S
AINT
Nichol it was first necessary to cross Bethnal Green, scarcely a fashionable neighborhood itself; but nothing in Bethnal Green prepared me for either the foul stench of Saint Nichol’s muddy byways or the view of human dereliction I had through the fluttering curtains of the coach. On the verge of the slum, in the ghastly greenish-yellow light that spilled from the door of a gin shop wherein anonymous figures staggered and shrieked and capered, perhaps dancing to the scrape of a fiddle, a man lurched toward the coach with open arms, as if in welcome, his round face red with drink, almost purplish and so bloated I imagined it would burst and release a spew of fluids. The fog thinned sufficiently to permit closer observation as we drew near Richmond’s home in Rose Street. I saw an elderly man on a stoop, his toothless grin expressing lustful anticipation, gutting the flayed carcass of an animal the size of a sheltie. I saw two prodigiously fat whores rolling in the muck, tearing each other’s clothing, their pale flesh smeared with ordure. I saw what appeared to be a man’s body lying in an alley mouth, a rat sniffing at its bootless feet, and, hard by Richmond’s house, I saw a tattered child with limbs like sticks being whipped by a creature with a shaven head, wearing a frock coat that failed to cover its womanly breasts and no trousers to hide hairy, scab-covered legs. All this grotesque misery and more hemmed in by crumbling, soot-blackened brick tenements that towered into the fog, making of the streets a canyon bottom such as might have wound through one of hell’s outlying precincts. I had not been long in London and, with the exception of the odd visit to Bedlam and Broadmoor, my experience of the city had been limited to its decorous quarters. Though I had heard tales of the poverty and horrid excess that ruled in Saint Nichol, their harrowing reality affected me more profoundly than had the most shocking of those anecdotes . . . and this, I understood, was merely the surface of the place, the skin beneath which lay greater pathologies yet.

Iron shutters protected the windows of Richmond’s house—a tenement no less soot-blackened than the rest, yet in better repair—and iron bands secured the planking of the front door. I heard a rumbling from above, as of the operation of machinery, but was unable to determine the source. Within, a demure young woman, quite fetching, her lustrous brown hair worn in a bun, clad Oriental fashion in a loose-fitting tunic and trousers of plum-colored silk, escorted us into a salon and there served us a restorative. The room had a cloying smell of sandalwood incense and was larger than some lecture halls, furnished with velvet armchairs and sofas, and divans of a Middle Eastern design, all arranged in groupings as if to encourage half a dozen separate conversations, these groups divided one from the other by statuettes and teak tables inlaid by ornate patterns of nacre and standing vases filled with flowering reeds and peacock feathers. It appeared to have been decorated by a sybarite, the walls hung with tapestries and paintings depicting beautiful women in various states of undress, gold candlesticks in the shape of nudes, everywhere bits of gaud and glamour—it seemed at odds with the character of the man who, having removed his greatcoat, sat drab as a beetle in his brown tweed suit, sipping a brandy. Yet I knew many other men who disguised a salacious nature behind a proper façade, and I harkened back to those rumors of Richmond’s corruption circulated by the members of the Inventors’ Club.

Richmond drained his brandy glass and said, “I’m afraid I have been less than forthcoming as to the reason I require your services. I did not think you would believe me were I to reveal myself prematurely. I hope that now you will forgive the actions of a desperate man and hear me out.”

“It appears I have little choice in the matter,” I said. “Unless I choose to take a long walk through Saint Nichol.”

“On the contrary. I will have my man convey you to your rooms straightaway if that is your desire . . . though it is not mine.”

“You have my full attention.”

“And you my gratitude.” Richmond settled himself more comfortably in his chair. “Following the death of my sister, Christine, three years ago, I moved into her house. This house. But for . . .”

I was incredulous. “Your sister lived in Saint Nichol? Surely not.”

“Yes. For seven years, until the moment of her death. May I continue?”

“Of course. Forgive my interruption.”

“I intended to gather her effects and sell the place,” Richmond said. “But the longer I remained, the more reluctant I was to leave. I felt drawn to the house, and I also became obsessed with the idea of learning what had happened to her. She died alone, unattended, from a blow to the temple, yet it could not be determined whether her injuries were caused by murder or misadventure. I am, as you may know, unmarried. My flat did double duty as my office and workplace, and there were few demands on my time. Eventually I moved into the house and made it my home.” He glanced about the room. “Except for some improvements to the exterior and my study, and a renovation of the uppermost floor, little has been changed since she died. This room, for instance, is exactly as she left it.”

“It scarcely seems the décor a young lady would have chosen,” I said.

“No, I suppose not. But then Christine could not be considered young. She was thirty-four when she died. And though she was gentle and kindly to a fault, I doubt that she would have been thought of as a lady by other than the most generous of souls. The house, you see, was a brothel that catered to the upper classes and my sister, by every account, both owned and served in it.”

Attempting to address this revelation with delicacy, I said, “I realize that among the wealthy there are those who derive titillation from visiting squalid locales. Yet I should think even they might find regular visits to Saint Nichol to be something of a risk.”

Bitterness invaded his tone. “Who can fathom these people, unless one is to the manor born?” He left a pause. “I suspect it was such a man who financed Christine. She had a modest income from my mother’s estate, but not enough to fund an enterprise of this magnitude.”

“I meant to ask how your sister became involved in this business,” I said. “Am I to take it that you are not privy to that information?”

“I haven’t a clue. It came as a shock to me that she was in London. Her letters bore an address on the Continent—in Toulouse, to be precise—and in them she spoke with enthusiasm about her life there. She must have had someone post them for her. When I visited her, and I did so twice a year, we met at the seaside, and whenever she had occasion to visit me, she would arrive by train. She concealed this portion of her life from everyone excepting her clientele. I cannot imagine how she sank to this abysmal state, nor have I encountered anyone who can enlighten me.”

A second young woman entered the room and whispered in Richmond’s ear. Though taller and more statuesque, more refined of feature, she might have been sister to the first and was clad in the same fashion.

“Very well, Jane,” Richmond said. “We will be along directly.”

Once she had exited I remarked on the women’s resemblance to each other. His response skirted the issue.

“I offered money to the girls who worked here in order that they could start life anew,” Richmond said. “Most accepted my offer, but Jane and Dorothea elected to stay with me. They have become my family, assisting me in my work and ministering to my every need.”

A touch of defiance in his speech told me all I might wish to know about the extent of their ministrations.

“I will return to the subject of my sister,” he went on, “but I must now, for the sake of brevity, tell you something about my work. Six months prior to Christine’s death I began construction of a machine that would cleanse the air of London. It was my hope to reduce the incidence of respiratory diseases. After the shock of Christine’s death had passed, after I had accepted the fact that she had debased herself, I once again took up my work.”

He stood and, beckoning me to join him, crossed to a table whereon lay a leather folio that proved to contain architectural drawings and blueprints. I did not gain much from the majority of them, save that they were precisely executed and described complex machinery. However, the last drawing made a certain fantastic sense—it was an overview of central London to which had been added eight mountainous conical structures (the cones formed by concentric silver rings, separated by gaps through which one could make out intricate labyrinths of glass and metal) that dwarfed the buildings beneath, standing, I would estimate, five or six times the height of Big Ben.

“Atop the house I have installed four machines like these, only much smaller,” said Richmond. “They are each of a variant design—I sought to learn which of them was the most efficient. The basic process is not one of extraction per se, but of attraction. That is, the machines do not wash the air, rather they attract particulates. In effect, they lure the particles into chambers on the sixth floor and these are then vaporized. I call the machines ‘attractors.’ I’m not altogether happy with that name, but . . .” He made a gesture of helplessness. “As time permits, if you wish, I will explain the process further, although I don’t believe an explanation is relevant to your purpose. But to continue, I completed installation of the last machine two and a half months ago and . . .”

“This is astonishing!” I said. “Have you succeeded? If so, my God! Might I see the machines?”

“Not at present. The atmosphere on the roof is poisonous and the visibility poor due to the concentration of coal dust. When I shut the machines down for repairs, I’ll take you to the roof. As to my success . . .” He closed the folio. “You may have noticed that the fog in the vicinity of the house is thinner than it was in Bethnal Green. This is due to the operation of my machines. So yes, I have succeeded to a degree. However, to contrive a practical application of the process will be the work of decades. As things stand now, machines of the requisite size would deafen the population of London. Until I am able to perfect a method of noise reduction, one that does not require buildings several times larger than those in the drawing, installations of an appropriate size will be out of the question. And there are other problems that must be overcome before I can start work on the project, not least among them the problem I wish you to address.”

“You may have come to the wrong man,” I said. “I know next to nothing about this particular branch of science.”

He grunted in amusement and said, “Nor, apparently, do I. Come.”

W
E ASCENDED TO
the sixth and topmost floor in a cramped elevator and, as we inched upward, Richmond informed me that one of the machines had incurred minor damage during its installation—this had altered the settings of certain instruments. To effect repairs would have required several months and thus he had completed the installation, thinking to determine what result the changed settings might achieve, all the while going forward with the fabrication of a machine that would replace it. By the time we reached the sixth floor, scarcely two minutes had elapsed, yet his mood had darkened appreciably. He snapped off his words, as if impatient with me, and would no longer meet my eye.

The sixth floor reeked of machine oil and coal, and—though it had been rendered as silent as possible by doubled walls and other architectural devices designed to muffle sound—the rumbling overhead made it necessary to raise one’s voice. A corridor had once run the length of the floor and the rooms along one side had been obliterated to create a dusty space of raw boards and roof beams that was now occupied by wooden benches, each laden with a clutter of tools and schematics. Those on the opposite side had been replaced by chambers with black iron walls, each having an oblong aperture that, when slid open, permitted the sampling of the air within. A gray canvas curtain hid a fourth chamber. Jane, the taller of the women I had earlier seen, waited beside the curtain—she put her mouth to Richmond’s ear, imparted a message I could not hear, and walked toward the elevator. After hesitating a moment, Richmond drew back the curtain to reveal a glass wall of surpassing clarity secured by ornamental iron mounts. A brown-haired woman stood within, clad in plum-colored tunic and trousers. I thought this to be Richmond’s other assistant, for she greatly resembled the woman who had just left us, but Richmond flattened his palm against the glass and said, “Christine.” I realized then that she was not the woman I had seen earlier, being older by a decade or thereabouts, her face and figure less full. Judging by their longing looks (looks, I noticed, that did not quite mesh—her eyes were angled to the right of Richmond), you would have thought they were lovers kept apart by an impenetrable barrier. I felt twice the fool for having submitted to this charade and was about to give voice to my reaction when the woman vanished. No show of any sort preceded this event, no disturbance of the surrounding air, no rush of sound. She simply winked out of existence. I started back from the glass, tripped, and fell heavily on my backside. Once again I made to speak and the woman reappeared in a far corner of the chamber, dressed in a chemise with a lace collar, her head held at a crooked angle, hair loose about her shoulders, except where it was matted against her temple by a welter of blood. She moved haltingly, aimlessly, as though disoriented.