The Angel of Highgate (24 page)

“In my profession,” Garrette continued, “I have occasion to render my services—as an act of charity—to those of the lowest strata of society. There are many men amongst the underclass who can fall no farther and thus have nothing to lose. These men can be persuaded to undertake any action, no matter the potential consequence, for a sum of money.”

By now Skinner’s heart was pounding, his mouth dry.

Garrette smiled. “If some tragic misfortune were to befall Lord Thraxton, in the eyes of the law and of society you will be completely innocent. And yet… yet he will know exactly who exacted this heavy price.”

Skinner looked terrified. But then he deliberately leaned his weight back onto his right buttock, so that the pain flared like a lighthouse beam cutting through the laudanum fog swirling in his mind, sharpening and illumining everything. He was shut up in his rooms, probably crippled for life, suffering miserably all because of this impudent upstart. Revenge was a pool of sweet, cool water and he wanted to slake a burning thirst, to ladle it into himself until it dripped from his chin.

“And how much will your services cost me?” Skinner asked, already sensing that the hirsute Doctor Garrette was stretching wide the jaws of a sprung steel trap and goading him to step into it.

The beady eyes glittered. The upper lip foliage twitched into a smile. He had still not blinked. “Twenty guineas. A payment of half to secure my services. The remainder payable upon completion of the task.”

Silas Garrette’s words echoed in Skinner’s mind. He knew that this could end badly. He knew that a wise man would abandon this imbroglio to the past and move on with his life. But such arguments held little weight against suffering in the here and now.

“If I were interested. What exactly would I get for my twenty guineas?”

Behind the rose-tinted lenses, Silas Garrette’s lashless eyelids closed slowly, almost dreamily, and then opened again. He raised his head slightly and the rose-colored pince-nez caught the flare of naked gas light and glowed crimson.

“Every man, even the foulest, even the most brutish, has something he loves. Something he would protect. Something the loss of which would wound him to the quick. I will find that thing. And when I do, Lord Thraxton will suffer a wound so deep, so terrible… it will never heal.”

* * *

The night was dry and still, but cold. Thraxton stood in the flare of a bull-nose lantern, shifting from foot to foot, swinging his arms and stamping his feet in an attempt to stay warm. He spun around at the sound of leaves rustling, but saw nothing. He had waited a full week in Highgate Cemetery, but Aurelia had not shown. Tonight was the final night. If she did not appear, he would have his answer.

Again the sound of leaves rustling.
It’s just the wind
, he thought, but then realized that the night was still. From the darkness came a lilting laugh. Thraxton sprang to his feet and looked around. “Aurelia?”

Again the laughter, this time from the right. He moved cautiously toward the sound, feeling for curbstones with his feet, blinded by the glare thrown from his own lantern. More laughter, behind him now. He spun. A feminine silhouette beckoned from atop a grave, arms reaching up to the sky. A stone angel. But then Thraxton realized that this angel had no wings. He vaulted up onto the stone table and seized the angel by the waist, finding it warm and soft—Aurelia. She shrieked as he grabbed her and they both overbalanced and toppled, crashing into a pile of leaves. The fall was harder than he anticipated. Aurelia lay with her eyes closed, unmoving, and Thraxton feared she had been knocked unconscious.

“Aurelia!” He massaged her wrists, trying to revive her. “Aurelia, are you injured?”

But she was unresponsive. Thraxton stroked her face with his hand. Her eyes remained shut, but then she began to giggle.

“Dear God, you frightened me!”

Aurelia opened her eyes and flashed a devilish smile. Their faces were very close. Thraxton moved in and kissed her softly, tentatively. When she did not resist, the kiss deepened as his passion soared and she returned it with the same intensity.

An hour later they stood at the front steps of Aurelia’s house.

“I suppose I must bid you goodnight,” Thraxton said.

But Aurelia took him by the hand and led him up the steps. All the windows were dark. The household was asleep. She quietly turned her key in the lock and they crept inside.

In the perfumed warmth of the Night Garden, Aurelia moved between rows of flowers, lighting candle lanterns and carefully lowering their glass shields. Thraxton watched as she lit the last lantern, then he slipped his hands around her slim waist, spun her around and kissed her deeply. Together they sank onto the day bed. They kissed until they lost themselves, chewing drowsily on each other’s mouths. Thraxton’s fingers moved down the buttons of her dress from the neck down. As he unfastened each one, the skin of her chest showed stark white against the black lace. He began a series of light kisses from her navel up her chest, pausing at the hollow of her throat and then up her neck, nibbling at her chin before his lips returned to hers. Aurelia gasped with pleasure and hugged him closer, her lips grazing his ear as she whispered, “Yes… yes… oh, yes.”

As they made love in the narrow bed, a moth landed on Thraxton’s shoulder, skittered across his naked back, and onto the bare thigh Aurelia had cinched tight around his waist. The moon burst from a pall of black cloud, its white beam surging through the glass roof. At its touch, the Night Angels stirred atop their stalks, petals spreading wide, sobbing their perfume into the air until the moths spun in circles, drunk with their scent. As their lovemaking rushed to its climax, a moth flittered up to the candle lantern. Drawn by its light, the moth crawled beneath the open glass as if to kiss the flame, igniting instantly. It flared bright and tumbled away. When it hit the floor, nothing remained but embers.

* * *

Dawn was breaking over London as Thraxton strolled away from Robert Greenley’s house. He turned and looked back to see Aurelia, standing at the window of the Night Garden. He smiled and raised a hand and she waved back.

His mind racing with hopeful thoughts, Thraxton did not notice the black carriage parked across the street. Couched in the shadows within, Silas Garrette reclined upon the worn leather cushion, a blanket thrown over his lap, his white top hat on the seat beside him. He had been following Thraxton’s shiny blue brougham for days and his patience had been rewarded. He had promised Skinner he would wound Lord Thraxton. Now he had found the entry point for that wound—all he had to do was apply the point of the scalpel and draw the blade through the meat until every last tendon and sinew was severed.

* * *

When the omnibus reached Mister Greenley’s stop, a half dozen passengers arose from their seats, and he was forced to wait his turn to clomp down the curving metal stairs from the top deck. It was past seven p.m., long past dark, and the pavement milled with people making their way home. A river of black top hats trudged before him, until the river parted and flowed around either side of a solitary white top hat that blocked the flow. When he reached the spot, Mister Greenley almost collided with an elaborately whiskered gentleman in tinted pince-nez. From the black Gladstone bag gripped in one hand, Greenley guessed his profession. When their eyes met, the man touched the brim of the white top hat in greeting and spoke.

“Good day, sir.”

Greenley stopped, surprised to be addressed in the street by a complete stranger.

“What is your business, sir?”

“My name is Doctor Garrette. I am currently treating a patient, a man of letters.”

“And of what concern is that to me?”

“You and he share a mutual foe. I speak of Lord Thraxton.”

Greenley’s eyes flared at the name, but he said nothing.

Silas Garrette looked around at the people brushing past.

“Might we not continue this discussion in private? The matter touches upon a most delicate matter… concerning your daughter.”

C
lara opened the front door and stepped inside. It was her day off, and instead of wearing her maid’s uniform, she was dressed in the height of fashion: a yellow skirt over a crinoline, a blouse with mutton leg sleeves, and a new hat with brilliant feathers and lace pinned to her hair. She stopped for a second to admire herself in the hallway mirror, lifting her skirts and extending a toe coquettishly to admire her new lace-up boots while she twirled the parasol she had purchased to complete her outfit.

Unbeknownst to her, Mister Greenley had just stepped from the parlor and stood silently watching. She jumped when he cleared his throat to let her know she was not alone.

“Oh, Mister Greenley. You gave me such a start!”

Mister Greenley stood silently appraising his maid’s new clothes, his gaze overbrimming with recrimination.

“It’s my day off, sir,” she hastily pointed out.

Greenley sniffed at the comment. “Is that a new outfit?”

“Yes,” Clara said uncertainly.

“It looks very expensive. Where did you get the money from?”

“The money? I, I saved it, sir.”

“You’ve been stealing, haven’t you?”

“No!” Clara gasped. “I ain’t never stole nuthin’, sir—”

“Don’t lie to me, girl!” Greenley bellowed. “I pay your wages. I know full well how much money you have and it’s certainly not enough to dress like a harlot.”

“But, Mister Greenley, this is what the fashionable ladies of London are wearing—”

“Not on the wage of a maid-of-all-work they aren’t!”

“I didn’t steal it!” Clara shouted defiantly. “I never stole nothing!”

Mister Greenley’s brows contracted in a fearsome glower.

“Don’t back-talk me, girl! I will not brook lying, thieving, dishonesty or secrecy in my home!” Mister Greenley lunged toward her and Clara flinched away, expecting a blow across the face. When it didn’t come she ventured a trembling look at her tormentor. Mister Greenley’s face was a clenched fist hovering close.

“Now,” he said, his voice trembling with violence straining to be unleashed, “tell me what is happening in my house… after I am in my bed.”

* * *

Once again, Thraxton idled in his carriage until the light in Greenley’s bedroom went out. Then he trotted across the road, swinging his walking stick, and danced up the marble steps. Things were going to change. He was already planning strategies of how he would reintroduce himself to Robert Greenley in a more advantageous way, so that he would come to look upon Thraxton as a future son-in-law.

But Thraxton’s knuckles met only thin air as the door snatched open before he had a chance to knock. Clara greeted him with an inscrutable expression as he entered, and then, instead of leading him up the stairs as usual, she held open the door to the front parlor.

“Miss Aurelia’s waiting for you in here, sir,” she said, her voice stretched to a brittle whisper.

Thraxton threw a puzzled look at her. Clara kept her eyes downcast, lips trembling.

Even before he entered the room, Thraxton knew it was a trap.

Through the open door he could see a white top hat sitting atop the sideboard. The likes of Mister Greenley would never wear a top hat—especially a white top hat. Thraxton knew there was someone waiting for him in the room, a stranger to the household. He stepped inside the parlor and the sharp bark of a cough pulled his eyes right.

Robert Greenley sat in a tall wingback chair, his meaty forearms stretched out along the chair arms, huge, knobby-knuckled hands gripping the leather so hard they left indentations. The violet eyes glowed incandescent in a face chiseled from granite.

Thraxton swallowed hard. The trap was sprung and he was caught.

“Sit down, sir!” Greenley commanded.

The words were like a scalpel slicing the tendons at the back of his knees. Thraxton collapsed onto the only seat: a low, floral-patterned ottoman that forced him to look up at Greenley.

Two smaller chairs flanked Greenley’s. Aurelia sat in one. She never once looked up at him, but kept her eyes fixed upon the carpet. In the other chair lounged the owner of the white top hat: a tall, weaselly man with a head covered by a mop of brown curls and the most preposterous side-whiskers. As Thraxton’s gaze fell upon him, the man tipped his head slightly, peering over the top of the rose-colored pince-nez perched on the bridge of the hawkish nose. His dark brown eyes held the voracious stare of a ferret that has cornered a rabbit in its burrow. The face was chillingly familiar. Thraxton was certain that he knew the man from somewhere, and then he remembered the tall, thin doctor who had spoken to him after the duel with Augustus Skinner. The realization thrust a knife blade of anxiety between his shoulder blades.

“So,” Robert Greenley said, his voice quaking with rage. “You have been found out, sir!”

“Found out? What are you insinuating—”

“I have discovered the truth, sir, of how you have been routinely bribing a domestic servant in my household to gain access to my daughter for immoral purposes.”