The Lamplighter (21 page)

“You take services here, do you not?”

“Every day,” the priest assured him as the choirboys trilled.

“Do you know all your parishioners?”

“That would be difficult,” Withers admitted. “But are you sure you won't come in? I have some logs on the fire.”

“I'm quite comfortable here, thank you. Would you happen to recall an Irish lass if I described her?”

“I can certainly try.”

Groves furnished him with a well-worn description, now appended with the adjectives
sly
and
two-faced
.

“And you would be well advised to be honest in your answers, Padre,” he added. “Which I say in the best interests of the lass, as well as yourself.”

“Oh, but I have an idea to whom you refer,” the priest said, with no intention of being secretive. “A most mysterious girl, invariably attired in black, as you suggest.”

Groves narrowed his eyes. “What do you know of her?”

“She no longer frequents our church. Though she might well attend Mass elsewhere.”

“When did she leave?”

“You would need to ask her, Inspector. I know only that she was given to…odd behavior.”

“What type of odd behavior?”

But at this point Withers became distracted. “Are…are you certain you won't come in?” he asked, squinting at Groves's forehead. “There seems to be a line of blood above your left eye, Inspector…coming from under your hat.”

Puzzled, Groves put a hand to his brow and, drawing it away, examined his fingertips.

“Are you sure you're all right?” the priest asked.

For a moment, looking at the blood, Groves wondered if he had done so much thinking recently that his skull had exploded. But then he recalled the sting of the falling masonry and wiped his forehead with a pocket handkerchief.

“I'm perfectly well, thank you,” he said irritably. “But the lass,” he went on, determined not to be distracted. “What type of odd behavior?”

“Well, the girl…the young lady…”

“Aye…”

“She seemed attentive most of the time…you might say angelic.”

“Go on.”

“But on occasion she seemed to take exception, most inexplicably, to parts of the liturgy.”

“What do you mean by ‘exception'?”

“She would rise in the pew, and spit out some sort of imprecation, and storm off.”

“Imprecation?”

“Not blasphemy, exactly…just something expressing disapproval.”

“She did not like what you were saying, is that it?”

“It seemed so. It was unpleasant, certainly, but not without precedent. I tried to tolerate it, but it reached the stage where an approach was necessary, and I was on the verge of confronting her when I noticed that she was no longer attending. I hope no ill has come of her?”

Groves belatedly realized it was a question, but he did not deign to answer. “Which part of the service provoked the outbursts, do you recall?”

“There was one time during the Offertory of the Victim,” Withers admitted, “when she seemed especially put out. She rose and snarled something—I think it was in Latin, as indeed the prayer was—and fled as if possessed.”

“And what is this Offertory of the Victim?”

The priest smiled indulgently. “It follows the Consecration of the Wine. The congregation offers the Victim—the body and blood of Christ—to the Lord God as sacrifice.”

“A sacrifice,” Groves echoed, pondering it. “Anything else?”

“It's difficult to remember every incident, though I think she flinched, as if stung, whenever the name of the Agnus Dei was invoked.”

“The…?”

“The Lamb of God. Who takes away the sins of the world.”

“Aye,” Groves said, feeling that the taint was becoming clearer now, for far from the bleating doe she had appeared at their first meeting it was obvious that the woman was prone to vicious, even violent, turns of character. It was not enough to arrest her—not yet—but his nostrils flared with anticipation and excitement. “Have you ever heard of a certain Mirror Society?” he asked.

He examined the priest closely, but saw no evidence of evasiveness behind his answer. “The Mirror Society? Why, no…”

“Did you know Professor Smeaton?”

“He was a man I tipped my hat to,” the priest answered carefully, “and I mourn his death. But I was not a companion of his.”

“He had no association with your church, then?”

“I would regard that as most unlikely.”

“This might have been twenty years ago, or more.”

The priest shrugged. “I was very young then—a novice.”

“Did you ever hear of Smeaton contacting a certain monsignor?”

The priest considered. “I don't recall any monsignors based in Edinburgh at that time. There were a few, I suppose, who passed through.”

“Any of these you recall in particular?”

“There was Monsignor Dell' Aquila, of course,” the priest said, and in the background the hymns abruptly faded. “From the Vatican. He arrived here in a cloud of great secrecy, as if on an urgent mission. Yes, I remember that most clearly.”

“And who was he, to have traveled from such parts?”

“A famed demonologist, Inspector—an exorcist. The most experienced in all the Church.”

“A sorcerer?”

“A priest who casts out spells and devils. A small, uniquely somber man. He looked very much as though he had been to hell and back. Which is,” Withers added, “to be expected, I suppose.”

“Is it possible he was summoned by Smeaton?”

“Well, Inspector, of that I can't say. As far as I'm aware, Monsignor Dell' Aquila never uttered a word about his purpose in the whole time he was here. Though when he left, as I recall, there was certainly hanging about him an atmosphere of defeat.”

“Defeat?”

“He looked at least ten years older, and he had shed a considerable amount of weight.”

“And where is this monsignor now, Padre? Where can he be contacted?”

“Oh, I regret that's no longer possible.”

“He won't speak to me?”

“It's not that he
won't
speak, Inspector,” the priest said grimly. “It's that he
can't
speak.”

Groves read the implication with dismay. “He's dead?”

Withers nodded. “On a visit to Dublin,” he explained as the choirboys resumed with some sprightly new noel. “He was cut down one evening in front of St. Mary's Cathedral and ripped to pieces as if by wolves. It was most uncommon, as I recall.”

A
RTHUR
S
TARK,
book dealer and publisher since 1855, had personally printed pamphlets by Marx, Engels, and the newly founded Fabian Society and was exceedingly sensitive to the notion that private enterprise had a way of inhibiting knowledge and exploiting desperation. He sometimes tried to convince himself that his was a vocation of civil—if not divine—good, and to assuage his conscience he frequently supplied books free of charge to charities and educational institutions. And he had once been a penniless university student himself, surviving on stony bread, restrained tea leaves, and the vaporous dreams of some future prosperity. So he was hardly unsympathetic to the gaunt and sallow young man who now stood hopefully on the other side of the counter.

But just the previous night he had been examining his accounts, a distasteful procedure in his trade, and he was acutely aware that if he was to keep his business afloat he would need to revive and exercise some ruthless trader's instincts. Without them he might not last another two years. He had little saved for any contingency. Barely enough to maintain his beloved presses. And almost nothing to continue rewarding his assistant for exceptional performance, as he so liked to do.

“Let me see…” he muttered, shuffling the old books in his hands and squeezing them like market oranges.

“The condition's fair, I hope?” the student asked.

“Not unacceptable, not unacceptable, but…but these are not what you might call sought-after items, lad, I hope you understand that.”

The student nodded. “Yes…I appreciate that.”

“And, er…” Stark faltered, “and I cannot offer you much, you know, I cannot offer you much.”

“I understand.”

“Then let me see…let me have another look.”

In fact, he was doing everything possible not to betray his excitement. Because—while three of the volumes were dry academic texts, of little value to any but those studying natural history—the last book was an exquisitely decorated calf-leather copy of Goethe's
The Sorrows of Young Werther
. First English translation. Immaculate condition. And a book, as it happened, for which Stark had long held a standing order from a wealthy magistrate. “Well…” he said. “Well…I fear you will not find the price agreeable, lad, but these are hard times, you know.”

“Hard times,” the student agreed. “That's so…”

Stark tried hard not to grimace: it was too easy, almost unethical. He swallowed, set the books on the counter, and made a show of examining them yet again. But he could not even bear to look at the prize Goethe. He buried it, along with his guilt, under the three science books.

“I can offer no more than one shilling,” he said through his teeth. He had not raised his eyes.

“For which one?”

Stark coughed. “For all of them.”

He heard a silence, through which he imagined the student must have balked. But when he managed to look up he saw the boy only nodding distractedly. “I see, I see…” the boy said, glancing this way and that, as though he had something far more important on his mind.

Stark now shifted warily. There was nothing in the boy's manner to suggest that he was a thief—and Stark usually trusted his instincts on such things—but stolen goods were a bane of his trade, and such items appeared most frequently in the hands of starving students.
“One shilling,”
he repeated, as though to remind the boy of the miserable stakes, and inviting him to withdraw. “That's all I can offer.”

“That will have to do, then, I suppose,” the student said with a most peculiar smile.

Stark's eyes lowered. “I'll…I'll need to take your details, of course,” he said, genuinely confounded. “In the register, you understand.”

“Of course,” the boy agreed, and readily accepted the proffered pen.

He bent over and scribbled his address—student lodgings in Howe Street—and when Stark handed him the money from the cash drawer he pocketed it without even a glance. And then he just stood on the other side of the counter, lingering there, his eyes making a furtive sweep of the rows of shelves, as though he had some great shameful secret to disclose and was just waiting for the proper moment.

Stark waited uncomfortably, his hands on the counter.

Finally the boy leaned forward, making one last check of the surroundings, and spoke under his breath.

“The young lady…” he said.

Stark stared at him.

“The young lady…” he said again. “The one who works here…”

Stark was silent.

“Might…“the boy whispered tightly, “might she be in today?”

For a while Stark remained completely unresponsive. He did not even blink. Only his hands moved, wandering furtively around the four books and drawing them possessively across the counter.

“I regret,” the book dealer said eventually, “that the lady to whom you refer is unavailable at this time.”

The student, hearing the clank and hiss of the printing press from the cellar, and sensing her proximity, felt bold enough to pursue his query.

“Might she be in later, perhaps?” he asked. “At some point…when I may return?”

Stark looked at the boy and saw all the familiar signs: lonely, underfed, no doubt steeped in debt, and hunting for a single spark to brighten the dour Edinburgh winter. It was impossible not to pity him, but simultaneously Stark felt duty-bound to be curt, for the boy's long-term good.

“I wouldn't return, lad, if I were you,” he said firmly. “I wouldn't ask again.”

He stared at the boy unwaveringly, to convey the gravity of his advice, and observed the young face slowly cloud.

“I'd look elsewhere if I were you,” Stark affirmed tonelessly. “There's no point wasting your time.”

The boy considered for a few moments and cleared his throat. “She is…with another?” he whispered fatalistically, as though it were something he had long imagined.

Stark held the books to his chest. “She is…unavailable.”

The boy looked away, looked back, and then nodded defeatedly. “I see,” he said, digesting his despair. “I see.” He lingered there for another two or three moments, feeling his heart shrivel like a burning blossom, and nodded without raising his eyes. Then he turned, most abruptly, and headed for the door in a daze.

Stark felt his own heart swell.

“Lad,” he said, before the boy had gone completely.
“Lad
…”

The student turned at the doorway, his face ghostly white, and Stark made a show of examining the books again, as though he had just spotted something.

“Er, this book…this one,” he said, holding up the Goethe. “I fear I might have undervalued it.” He looked at it again. “Aye,” he said, appreciating that he could ill afford it, but feeling an overpowering desire to mollify the boy's despair. “I owe you at least another shilling.”

He promptly reached for the cash drawer, withdrew the money, and looked up—but the boy had already disappeared.

Alone and strangely despondent, Stark replaced the coin in the drawer and sighed.

He had dealt with edgy suitors before and no doubt he would deal with them again. He knew that in Edinburgh, as in any other city, there is little more attractive to the lonely university student than the maiden in the local bookstore. And when the maiden is one such as Evelyn—blushing, vulnerable, and evasive—she becomes all the more appealing to such harried and desperate young men.

Sorting the new acquisitions absently, he reflected that perhaps he too might once have been the victim of her inadvertent charms, and in his own queer way similarly smitten. Stark came from an ever-dwindling family line that had developed a disdain for human intimacy and an inordinate compensating affection for the animal kingdom. It was a public display of concern for some imprisoned birds, two years earlier, that had first brought Evelyn to his attention and through which he had felt an agreeable kindling in his own stoic and cynical heart. He tried not to think about it.

He was about to head downstairs, to see how she was proceeding with the printing, when he noticed a bald man with shiny ears browsing in a desultory manner near the door. Stark was briefly suspicious—the customer, with his back turned, held his hat in his hands like an open bag—but it did not take him long to recognize, even from such an unhelpful angle, the singular bearing of Inspector Carus Groves: a man to whom he had once lent, on request, some books on the history of crime fighting.

The Inspector, finally turning, and ascertaining that he had been identified, now shifted on his feet and approached the counter, nodding. “Mr. Stark,” he said.

“Inspector,” Stark acknowledged coolly.

“Have some books by Dickens, do you?”

“Charles Dickens?”

“Aye.”

“Of course, Inspector. But you won't find them in the History section.” Not by nature an acerbic man, Stark had never forgiven Groves for returning the borrowed volumes soiled with spilled ink.

Groves nodded and quickly sought a digression. “Making books down there?” he said, cocking an ear to the sound of the press.

“Some pamphlets for the Faculty of Medicine. You would like one, perhaps?”

Groves ignored him. He looked from left to right, just as the student had done, and lowered his voice in a like manner. “You have a lass working for you here, do you not?”

“I…do,” Stark admitted, momentarily entertaining the unappetizing notion that the aging Inspector had himself developed an affection for his assistant.

“By the name of Evelyn Todd,” Groves said in a hushed tone, as though speaking of a demon.

Stark nodded.

“She is on the premises now?”

“That is so, Inspector. But out of earshot, I assure you, so you may speak plainly.”

Groves listened to the huffing and cranking of the press, and when he spoke again it was only fractionally louder. “May I ask what it is that she does here?”

“She assists with printing, as now. And she serves customers.”

“Ah?” Groves looked suspicious. “How so?”

Stark shrugged. “She accepts payments. She makes payments. She directs customers to the right shelf.”

“Aye?” Groves made a show of looking doubtful. “Good at that, is she?”

“The best I have ever known,” Stark replied truthfully: Evelyn had a truly extraordinary memory and in seconds could locate any required text from within the store.

“Friendly, is she?”

“Within limits.”

“Aye?”

“This is a bookstore, Inspector. I think she finds no purpose in idle chatter.”

Groves considered, listening to the subterranean press, then lowered his voice some more. “But might she have formed a special relationship with any customer, to your knowledge?”

Stark did not shift his eyes. “I do not believe she has much interest in special relationships, Inspector.”

“You have not seen her in the company of others?”

“If you mean in circumstances other than strictly professional, the answer is no.”

Groves considered a few more moments and then leaned closer. “And you yourself, Mr. Stark—might I ask how you get along with the lass?”

Stark recognized the insinuation and resented it. “I find her punctual, reliable, courteous, and efficient. I pay her accordingly.”

Groves nodded. “Pay her well, do you?”

“In line with her performance.”

The press squealed and puffed.

“How many days does she work here, then?”

“Most days during semesters.”

“There is no fixed schedule?”

“It depends on my other commitments.”

“You never leave the premises?”

“Frequently.”

“Ah?”

“I must occasionally leave to examine collections. Books that are too many, or too valuable, to be carted down here.”

“And so the store is sometimes in her jurisdiction alone?”

“That is the way of it. But I trust her like a daughter.”

“Yet you cannot know who she speaks to while you are absent? Or what she does?”

“I have no doubt she shelves books when she is not at the counter.”

“A full-time duty, is it?”

“Have a look around you, Inspector. You will nowhere find a more ordered bookstore.” Indeed, Evelyn's efforts in regard to maintenance were practically obsessive: the shelves spotlessly clean, the spines immaculately even, the books filed with extraordinary precision. She even had the shrewdness to arrange at eye level those titles most likely to arouse interest in relation to current events, and recently had brought forward a stack of Bibles, some books on insanity, the memoirs of Colonel Horace Munnoch, and—most curiously, though Stark had not questioned it—a few titles of French philosophy.