The Hellfire Conspiracy (13 page)

“L
AD, CUT ALONG AND VISIT MISS POTTER AT THE
Katherine Building. Bring her to our chambers. If I am satisfied, I shall engage her services, provided she is still serious about her offer.”

“If she’s anything, she’s serious,” I said. “I’m certain she hasn’t changed her mind. I’ll see if she can come.”

I took a smart-looking hansom, hoping to impress Miss Potter, and left Barker to take an omnibus.

The Katherine Building where she worked was in a villainous part of Whitechapel, hard by the docks and the fish market. I let the cab driver curse until the air was blue about soiling his pretty wheels among the fish offal–strewn puddles, but we reached a liberal financial agreement. I went inside and found Miss Potter and explained that Barker wanted to see her. She put up the expected argument; she was busy collecting the rents. In turn, I told her this was her only chance. She conferred with a colleague and soon we were traveling through the City on our way to Whitehall. She was nervous about being interviewed by my employer, and I explained that while going into his office was like approaching a lion in its den, he improved upon closer acquaintance. I wasn’t certain she believed me. I’m not sure I did either.

Once back in Craig’s Court, I sat her in the visitor’s chair and left her to look about the room. She was only the second woman I’d seen in that seat since the year began. Barker was nowhere to be found.

“Jenkins?”

Our clerk was staring at our visitor as if she were an apparition from heaven.

“He hasn’t come through here, Mr. L.,” he said. “Try outside.”

I found Barker in the bare courtyard behind our offices, fingering a small, anonymous wildflower that had grown up through the cracks in the pavement.

“I’m thinking of putting in a small garden here,” he said, not looking up.

“Really?” I said. “That would be jolly.”

“That way, we can do our physical culture exercises out here during our spare moments.”

There’s nothing I would like better,
I thought,
than to come out to the courtyard in all manner of weather and do Barker’s exercises on the paving stones.

“She’s here, sir, waiting in your office.”

Barker nodded. Before he went inside, he shot his cuffs and resettled his frock coat, like an actor about to go on-stage. He’d eschew such a comparison, but it was apt all the same.

“Good afternoon, Miss Potter,” he said, striding into his chamber. He took her delicate hand in his calloused one, the same hand I’d seen put bone locks on several men in the year or more since I’d begun working with him. Beatrice Potter murmured a greeting. She did her best to look undaunted, but Barker had daunted braver people than she.

“Mr. Llewelyn tells me that you are anxious to aid our efforts to find Gwendolyn DeVere’s killer. Most women your age,” Barker noted, “are concerned with copying the latest fashions from Paris or compiling a list of the eligible young men of their set.”

“I am not most women my age, sir.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Do you think you could convince Miss Hill to have you take over Mrs. DeVere’s duties?”

“I don’t foresee a problem. She was sad to see me go to my present position.”

“Excellent. I realize you have other duties, but if you could contrive to attend at least an hour a day, I would be grateful.”

“Do you suspect someone within the Charity Organization Society of having something to do with Gwendolyn DeVere’s murder?” she asked.

“Miss, I suspect everyone in Bethnal Green and several others who haven’t set a foot inside it. It is not time to begin eliminating suspects just yet. I am hunting facts and opinions and I think you might be well placed to deliver both.”

“I expect this to be a paid position.”

“Certainly. I am not one of your charities.”

“What duration shall be my employment?”

“It shall be brief, merely a week or two, until I find the man who murdered Miss DeVere.”

“You think you shall find him in so short a time?” she dared ask.

“I can but cast my net, Miss Potter, but it is a stout old net, and I am an experienced fisherman. We are no longer looking for a white slave ring. Mr. Llewelyn and I have received a letter from a madman whom we believe has stolen and murdered half a dozen young girls in Bethnal Green.”

“My word,” Miss Potter murmured, clutching her throat.

“We learned that Miss DeVere’s escape from the charity was aided by Miss Ona Bellovich.”

“Might I see the letter?”

Cyrus Barker leaned back in his chair and scratched his chin absently, the way he does when deep in thought. He was not inconvenienced in the least that this girl was waiting for him to make a decision.

“Very well,” he finally said, pulling the note from the wide middle drawer of his desk. “I would appreciate your opinion.”

Beatrice took the letter and read it over a few times without comment. Finally, she set it back upon the desk, facedown.

“Do you believe in woman’s intuition?”

“I have no formed opinion. Perhaps.”

She tapped the note with a nail. “This is pure evil.”

Barker nodded but said nothing.

“He’s very…harsh. His taunts must be unbearable to you.”

I realized then how sensitive the girl was. She was actually concerned over my employer’s feelings.

“I can bear them well enough, miss. Do you recognize the hand?”

“I do not.”

“What about the poetry? Is anyone at the charity a writer of poems?”

“Miss Levy is a published poet. Amy’s work has appeared in several journals. Of course, it’s nothing like this. This is quite crude.”

“I shall accept your opinion of it.”

“Do you really smoke an ivory pipe?” she asked suddenly.

Barker sat a moment, then got up and moved to his bookshelves. He opened his walnut smoking cabinet, displaying two racks of pipes.

“Meerschaum, actually,” he said.

“So I see.”

“I am satisfied, Miss Potter. Consider your services engaged.”

“Is there anything I should look for in particular?” she asked.

“Mr. Llewelyn, have you got the list of victims with you?”

I flipped through my notebook, glad for once that he hadn’t called me “lad” in front of Miss Potter. “Here it is, sir.”

“Thank you. I would like to know if the girls on this list came through the C.O.S.”

“As you wish, sir.”

“I hope your enquiry skills are as satisfactory as your manners. The socialism notwithstanding, you give me some hope for the next generation. That will be all.”

He rose, gave a solemn nod, and then exited the way he came. He wasn’t going anywhere save the empty courtyard again, I knew. Perhaps it was all for Miss Potter’s benefit.

“What an unusual person your employer is,” she said under her breath.

“He is that,” I commented diplomatically.

“He really thinks he’ll find Gwendolyn’s killer in so short a time?”

“If he says so, I believe him. He does not make inflated promises.”

C
YRUS BARKER AND I WENT TO THE MILE END
Mission after that, where he spent his time pummeling McClain’s hanging bag while the reverend tried to tear off my head with his hook punch. Handy Andy complained the entire time about his gloves, but I doubt I would have been conscious if he hadn’t worn them. When we were done, he would not vouchsafe that I had learned anything, only that I was “coming along,” whatever that meant. I felt as if something had jarred loose in the back of my head, but I knew by now that complaining wouldn’t do any good.

We slipped down the alley and entered the back door of the warehouse, then climbed the steps to the first floor. As expected, Mac was intent on his vigil. He had one hand propped high against the side of the window and the other on his waist. At rest he looked like a Greek statue, save the yarmulke.

“Has anything of note happened while we were gone?” the Guv asked.

“Yes, sir,” he said, diving into the pocket of his jacket. “Jenkins was here. I’m afraid you received another anonymous note.”

Barker grunted and took the envelope, slitting it open with the stiletto he generally kept in a sheath up his sleeve. I realized my employer had probably been expecting one after Gwendolyn DeVere’s body was found. The note read:

“Welsh terrier,” I commented. When one is small, one is a target for everyone.

“Have you any constructive comments to make, Mr. Llewelyn?”

“No one would write ‘a-searching,’ sir. They might say it, but they would not write it. It sounds like an educated man trying to sound uneducated.”

“Agreed. And?”

“‘You can’t catch me.’ That’s from the old tale of the Gingerbread Man,” I pointed out.

“Another fairy tale? We may have to get a copy of that. Continue.”

“Well, sir, he must know you rather well. He knows you like tea and tobacco and appears to be going out of his way to inform you that he knows what’s going on. Either he is someone with whom we come into close contact, or he is remarkably well informed.”

“Let’s have a bite,” my employer said, “and settle in. Mac, some tea, if you will be so kind.”

Like Her Majesty, I have only the highest respect for Fortnum & Mason, but my kippers on flavorless wafers tasted as metallic as the tin in which they came and the tea did not successfully wash away the taste. I lay down, hoping to dream of roasted turkeys with mountains of mashed potatoes smothered in steaming gravy. One cannot order one’s dreams, however, and I dreamed something else entirely.

I was looking down upon the old and swaybacked, Dickensian roofs of Bethnal Green, and above them, the giant, wraithlike figure of Mr. Miacca strode about, seeking whom he would devour. For some reason, I pictured him with bleached white skin; sunken eyes; and wild, pale hair. He wore a black claw hammer coat, verminous as the grave, with Regency breeches and hose on long, spindly legs. His feet, clad in moldy buckled shoes, were the size of drays; and he was bending down, snatching up bad children and dropping them into his open jaws, as Saturn did his children. For the good little boys and girls, he left presents on their windowsills, the wrapped boxes tiny in his skeletal hands.

I looked down at myself, and suddenly, I was eight again. Beside me, an equally young Palmister Clay was pointing at me and crying that I’d stolen his sovereign. I looked over my shoulder as Miacca’s hand came snaking toward me, its claws growing bigger and bigger until they enveloped me. He lifted me high up over the buildings until I was over his gaping maw. Then he released me and I plummeted.

“Lad?”

“Yes, sir?” I said, rubbing my eyes. It was dark, but by the shafts of light coming in through the window, I could see Mac loading shells into his shotgun. Apparently, clothes weren’t the only things he had packed in his trunks. “What is it?”

“I’m not certain,” Barker stated. “There are a couple of fellows down in Green Street acting suspiciously.”

“What are they doing?” I asked, climbing off the hard mattress in my stocking feet.

“Merely walking, but they have passed by every twenty minutes or so since eight o’clock, and it is almost ten. They are dressed in capes and top hats. There, do you see?”

I looked down just as a caped form turned away into Globe Road. “Shall I throw on my boots?”

“Yes, and get your pistol. I have a feeling something is most definitely happening in the Green tonight.”

I pulled on my boots and began to fill the chambers of my Webley. Snapping it shut, I pulled on my coat with the built-in holster that Mac had set out, and followed the two of them, still rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

We caught sight of the top-hatted men walking shoulder to shoulder down Green Street. Barker raised his chin in their direction, and we followed them stealthily. Bethnal Green suddenly seemed deserted, as if every hovel, tenement, and rooming house was as empty as the street we padded down.

The fog was pooling about our ankles, and when the river breeze shot out of an alleyway, it whistled against the sharp edges of the brick.
Nothing good could come of this,
I thought, already missing the relative safety of our near-empty room.

“They’re gone,” I said. One second they had been ahead of us, and now they were not.

“I believe they went down that alley there, sir,” Mac said.

We approached it cautiously. It provided room for only one person to go down at a time. The alley came to a thoroughfare, though there was no sign to say which it was. We picked up our quarry on the other side and plunged into another alleyway, a wider one this time. The Guv quickened his pace, and we hurried along behind. As I’ve said before, he moves quickly for a big man.

“They’ve gone into that court there,” Barker whispered, and we followed them into the yard. It may have been a knacker’s yard or a stable at one time. It seemed abandoned now, a cluster of anonymous building backs. We stepped out of the shadows into the center of the empty court, then heard the sudden shutting of the gate behind us. We had been neatly trapped.

The two men stepped out of the gloom ahead and began removing their cloaks and hats. Underneath, they were mere street vermin, poorly dressed. They were in their early twenties, like me, but all resemblance ended there. One had a long scar bisecting his face, while the other must have looked wicked the day he was born. I wasn’t sure what to do, but that didn’t stop Mac. He pulled out his shotgun and cocked it before pointing it at the duo.

“Easy, Mac, easy,” Barker said. “These lads have only been out for a stroll so far.”

There was a flaring off to my left and the shadows were illuminated by a vesta. I saw several menacing faces during the brief flare up, as the one in the middle lit a cigarette. Perhaps it was a trick of the light that the men looked particularly demonic in the sudden glare. I didn’t wait for permission but dug my pistol from its pocket holder. I spared a glance past Mac at the Guv. There was movement in his direction, too. Barker raised his brace of American Colts. This could quickly degenerate into gunplay. The leader got a look of resolution on his face and stepped forward along with his companions. Slowly, inexorably, they formed a circle around us which grew smaller and smaller with each step. When would they fire? It was a moment before I realized they wouldn’t. The dozen men slowly hemming us in were unarmed.

“Stop or I shall shoot!” Jacob Maccabee called out, but his voice wasn’t as commanding as he could have hoped. They ignored him and continued to come forward. Another few seconds and the barrel of my pistol would be flat against one of their chests.

“Sir?” Mac asked tensely.

“Steady,” Barker growled. “Fire on my word.”

Mac prepared to blow the fellows in front of us to pieces, but some code of honor told me it wasn’t right. These chaps were unarmed. Theoretically, we were in command. In another step they would be close enough to lay hands on our weapons, at which point what would happen would be anyone’s guess.

“Stop, blast you!” Mac cried. As one, they complied, standing shoulder to shoulder, hemming us in. My mind began formulating a plan. I would swing out my right arm and catch the first fellow in the throat with the butt of my pistol. Then I would pull him into his fellow, jump over both of them, and with any luck, catch a third full in the stomach with the heel of my boot.

“Lad, no,” Barker said, divining my thoughts. He slid his pistols back into their holsters inside his coat. “Stand down.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mac, break open your piece.”

Reluctantly our butler eased the hammer down and breached his weapon. I slid my pistol back into its holster.

We stood there immobile, all fifteen of us. The tension was so high, I had to say something or bust.

“Anyone fancy a waltz?”

There was a low chuckle from the group, but it was interrupted by the creak of the gate as it opened again. We heard the jingle of harness and the clopping of iron-shod hooves on paving stone. A brougham pulled in and stopped. One of the men near us went to it and opened the door. A set of collapsible steps unfolded, and a man stepped down to the ground. He was about fifty years of age, in expensive clothes, and knee-length boots, with a nose a Roman senator would envy and a well-tended set of side-whiskers. He was every inch the aristocrat, as blue-blooded as any name in
Burke’s Peerage.

“Thank you,” the man said to his subordinate as he crossed the yard and entered the circle through the gap. He gave Mac and me a cursory glance, then his eyes fastened upon my employer. The Guv crossed his arms and waited upon events. He seemed as unruffled as if he were in Hampstead Heath.

“Barker, I would have a word with you,” he said.

“I wish to know with whom I am having concourse,” the Guv replied.

“‘Concourse,’ is it?” the man asked. “You are not the dullard I took you to be.”

“State your business,” Barker growled. “And tell your hirelings to step back a little. I like to have room about me when I talk. If I am not given it, I shall take it.”

The man made a gesture and the circle about us enlarged a little. Mac and I breathed easier.

“Never mind about my business for now. Let us discuss yours. You are after a murderer, I understand.”

“That is correct.”

“And you are working with the Charity Organization Society. You know Octavia Hill and her monstrous regiment of socialist women. You’ve been seen speaking with William Stead, and I understand you are a close associate of the Reverend McClain.”

“So far, all of your assertions are correct.”

“Are you a socialist?”

Barker gave a yawn, patting it down with the back of his hand. “Are you keeping me from my bed merely to discuss politics?”

“You have not answered.”

“I do not feel compelled to answer your questions, sir.”

“Come, Barker, it’s a simple question. Are you a socialist, or aren’t you?”

“No, sir, I am not. I am a Conservative, not a Fabian.”

“Yet you associate with them.”

“I have been hired to find a child’s murderer. I will associate with whomever helps me find him.”

The man got a tight smile on his face. “You have no clue what this is about, do you?”

“Enlighten me,” Barker murmured.

“Stead has vowed to see that the age of consent is raised from thirteen to sixteen. I represent a consortium of men who will not allow that to occur.”

“And why would they interest themselves in such an issue, sir?” Barker continued.

“That is not your concern. Perhaps the girl was a sacrifice made by the socialists in order to bring attention to the so-called white slave trade.”

“Do you know this for a fact, or do you merely suspect it, sir?”

“A blind man could see it. Are you blind behind those black spectacles?”

“I am not, I assure you,” Barker said. “Have you any more to recommend to me?”

“Only that the men I represent are very powerful and will not be pleased if the vote should be entered and passed.”

“You give me too much credit, sir. I am but an enquiry agent; I cannot control the processes of the House of Commons. I thank you for the information, however, and shall consider it thoroughly.”

The man reached into his pocket, pulled out a small sack of coins, and tossed it into one of the gang member’s hands. The men could not help but give a short cry of savage joy. No doubt they would be drunk as lords soon, despite the hour. Closing time is variable when there is money to be made.