The Lamplighter (14 page)

Absurd though Hogarth was, Groves nevertheless came away deeply impressed by his physical command of the enclosed space, which had him briefly starved of air, and so when Pringle entered the Squad Room late in the afternoon to inform him that Evelyn Todd had returned and most earnestly desired to speak to him, he immediately resolved to make the most of the lesson. He repaired to the neighboring room, the claustrophobic office of the Chief Constable, and quickly set up a chair to face him, dimmed the gaslight, inflated his chest, and stood to his full height, so that he might subjugate her in the style of the Moor.

He cleared his throat gravely. “Fetch her,” he said to Pringle, tightening his muscles. “And then set yourself in the hall outside. If you hear me raise the alarm, run in at once with truncheon ready.”

Leaving the Royal Lyceum with Hogarth's mention of an orphan fresh in his mind, Groves had made a visit to the New Register House to locate the birth certificate of one Evelyn Todd, specifying the years 1856–65. The search had yielded no immediate results, but the curator reminded him that prior to 1855 all civil registration was in the domain of parish ministers and session clerks; was it possible the woman he sought was of an older vintage? Groves paused to recall Evelyn's delicate features and agreed that, for all her maidenly aspects, it was just possible that she was in the region of her early thirties. But the curator warned him that, without further details, it would take time—hours, at least—to track down the right entry, for the parochial registers were many and voluminous. Groves told him to issue a message when he had succeeded, and returned to Central Office with oddly magisterial steps.

“Enter,” he now said when there was a light knock on the door. He was standing in front of the narrow window, his arms folded imperiously and lamplight from Fishmarket Close forming a blazing aureole around him.

Evelyn oozed in like a mist. She was wearing mourning black again, and with a high, faintly clerical collar she looked eerily nunlike.

“Be seated,” Groves intoned, nodding at the seat, but she did not even seem to hear him. She slid into his shadow and gripped the back of the chair.

“I beg your forgiveness,” she said hoarsely. “I know I was rude, uncommonly rude, but…I cannot explain it…I have these episodes…you must not hold it against me!”

Her face had twisted into creases of long-carved anguish, and she looked every minute of a woman in her thirties. Groves might have been relieved at this rediscovery of her submissive aspect—and indeed his muscles loosened of their own accord—but he was still not certain what to make of it: the contrast was again inexplicable. “Calm yourself, woman,” he said loudly, so that his words might be overheard by Pringle, “and make good your account.”

“You will not believe me…I cannot blame you if you think the less of me, that I am some vile creature, some duplicitous thing. But I ask you to consider that what I say must have some merit, for I would not dare to show my face before you if it were not so! And in truth I am not a liar, and I leave it to my conviction to prove it to you!”

Groves narrowed his eyes. “What are you talking about, woman?”

She looked at him directly for one galvanizing second. “The murder at Waverley Station,” she said, and gulped and gasped. “I dreamed it all in great detail…exactly as it happened…and I saw the message—
Ce Grand Trompeur
!”

This was a feeble boast, for the message was well known, and Groves now wondered if he was witnessing a performance as contrived as that of Seth Hogarth. “Take a seat,” he commanded again, but she only gripped the back of the chair more tightly.

“I saw it!” she insisted. “I saw it as I slept! The murder! The note!”

“You might have read about it. Or heard about it, for it is no secret now.”

“No, no—” She shook her head vigorously. “The train departing, the man leaving his cab, the great shape striking him down—I saw it all in my dream, and the message also, in rough black ink splashed across a page—‘This Great Deceiver.'”

There had been no details in the newspapers about the precise form of the message—the “rough black ink”—but then again it would be easy enough to guess. Groves tightened his arms and stared down his nose.

“What else do you claim to have seen?”

“Just what I have mentioned—but most clearly! I might have been there, it was so clear!”

“Perhaps you were there.”

“I was asleep—the nightmare woke me!”

“At what point?”

“As soon as the man was cut down.”

“But again you did not see the killer, I suppose?”

“Only steam, and a dark shape. I swear it's true, in God's name!”

Groves grunted. “In the washhouse you told me you had been sleeping until just before I arrived.”

“I was not entirely truthful,” she admitted, “but you must believe me now!”

For a moment Groves was almost swayed by her performance—and certainly her contrition made him feel deliciously powerful—but ultimately he rejected it all with an unsympathetic sigh. “This is all very grand,” he said, unfolding his arms and clasping his hands behind his back. “One moment the shallow strumpet with nary a thing to say, the next calling upon God and whiter than snow. Which is it to be, woman? Settle on your true face so that I can be sure of you.”

Evelyn shook her head. “I was dismayed that you did not believe me earlier, that is the truth of it. When it had pained me so much to come to your office and lay myself bare.”

He snorted. “Pain? Why should it be painful to tell the truth?”

“It hurts to look back,” she said.

“Into your dreams?”

“Into anything.”

Groves shifted sideways and a shaft of lamplight struck her like a blade. She winced and drew back into the security of his shadow.

“When were you born, woman?” he asked, remembering his failure at Register House.

“I don't remember.”

“You must have been told.”

“That part of my life is…not clear.”

“Who was your father? Your mother?”

She struggled. “I don't remember. But—”

“Where does the name Todd come from?”

“Someone…someone told me that was my name. But please—”

“Who?”

She shook her head. “Someone,” she managed, “at the orphanage.”

The orphanage
. Groves felt his muscles tighten again. “You came from an orphanage?”

She looked disconcerted. “I…I believe so.”

Groves retained his composure. “Which one?”

“A place in F-Fountainbridge. But please, this is not—”

“The Fountainbridge Institute for Destitute Girls?” Groves knew of the place from his days on the beat, an ugly black building mysteriously incinerated sometime in the late 1860s.

“Aye. But—”

“When did you leave there?”

She was visibly uneasy. “My…my family claimed me.”

“What family? You said you were an orphan.”

“My
family
.”

He detected some manner of evasiveness, or dishonesty, and he rose several inches on his feet before settling back. “Do you never tell the truth, woman?”

“I am not a liar,” she said.

“When did you return to Edinburgh?”

“Two years ago.”

“Why?”

“It seemed I should.”

“Why?”

She was growing increasingly uncomfortable. “It's my home.”

“What did you do when you returned?”

“I was a match dipper. I washed dishes at the Bell and Candle. But—”

“Anything else?”

“I did needlework. Then Arthur Stark gave me work and—”

“What about Professor Smeaton? Did you ever work for him?”

“No—”

“What about Colonel Munnoch?”

“No, no—”

“Do you know of a lighthouse keeper called—”

“No!”
she cried. Suddenly the washhouse witch had returned in force, and she seemed ready to snap the chair with her hands. “I know of no lighthouse keepers!” she said through gritted teeth. “And that is not why I am here!”

For a long time the only sound was the tick of the Chief Constable's eight-day clock.

By degrees Evelyn seemed to acknowledge her inappropriate temper and wavered like a reed, shaking her head apologetically. “I have seen another message…” she whispered, balancing herself on the back of the chair.

“Aye?” Groves took the opportunity to refold his arms defensively. “Which message is this?”

“The other message…”

“The French message? We have spoken—”

“No, no—the earlier message I spoke about. I strained hard and the vision returned to me.”

Groves was silent a moment, and in the silence heard a creak outside and realized that in the wake of Evelyn's outburst both their voices had hushed notably, so undoubtedly Pringle would be concerned. “The message you said had accompanied the murder of Professor Smeaton?” he asked, almost yelling.

She nodded. “I saw the words scratched on a wall.”

“Which wall?”

“A wall near the body.”

“I inspected the area nearby. There were no words.”

“Still I say,” Evelyn insisted, “that I saw a message.”

“And what was the form of this message?”

“I could not properly make it out, but I know it was in Latin.”

Groves decided to risk scorn. “Pish,” he said. “You might have inscribed it yourself!”

“I did no such thing,” Evelyn said, and glanced up at him with her shining eyes. “And that is not all,” she added quickly, guiltily. “For I think I now have an idea as to the killer's identity.”

Groves hesitated. “Oh?” he asked, still not sure he wanted the great mystery revealed to him by a madwoman.

“I cannot say I recognized him exactly, but I am now certain I have seen him before.”

Groves denied the possibility. “You make no sense, woman.”

“He is the lamplighter,” she announced.

Groves blinked. “The what?”

She released the chair. “The lamplighter, I am sure of it.”

“The lamplighter?”

She nodded.

Groves judged it safe to prod. “Which lamplighter?”

She could not answer.

“There are many lamplighters in this city,” he noted, “lest it not have occurred to you.”

“I do not know why I am certain of this,” she admitted, and briefly shook as though nauseated.

“It's a feeling, is that it?”

“A certainty.”

“Yet you cannot describe this particular lamplighter?”

“No.”

“Nothing about him at all?”

“No.”

“Not his name? His face? His beat?”

“Nothing,” she admitted, and looked up, her gaze lost momentarily on some point over his shoulder.

Turning, Groves became aware that she was staring at the lamp in Fishmarket Close, and suddenly he was convinced—he took hold of the whole idea with enthusiasm—that this new revelation was just a spontaneous invention. She was toying with him again, and for reasons that still eluded him.

“Aye,” he said angrily, “you must learn to cooperate, woman.”

“I am cooperating.”

“I can have you put on the flogging bench yet. Or sent to the gallows, if you fit the crime.”

But once more Evelyn momentarily seemed unable to contain her emotion. She glared at him like a willful dog before tearing her eyes away again, biting her lip in self-rebuke.

He gulped, unable to recognize his own feelings. “Is that all?” he heard himself say.

Defeated, she still did not respond, and abruptly looked on the verge of tears.

“Be…be on your way, then, woman.”

She headed for the door, head bowed.

But now, encouraged by her blushing retreat, Groves decided that he had not been sufficiently intimidating, and impulsively he circled the desk, feeling a strange urge to touch her skin. “A word before you go.”

She stopped, her hand on the knob.

“I have rarely met the likes of you,” he told her truthfully, withholding his own hand at the last moment only because he feared she might turn on him like a riled cat, “and I am not yet convinced that you do not belong in the madhouse. But keep in mind that I am not easily fooled. If you are tied up in these foul murders, and if you conceal something from me, then I will set myself on you like a brace of hounds, and upon my life I will not stop until you are brought to bay.”