The Lamplighter (29 page)

“I'm simply wary of strangers.”

“Then why do you roam the streets at all?”

“I have already answered this to others.”

He frowned. “What others?”

She seemed protective.

“What others, I say?”

She did not deign to respond.

He saw an explicit reflection of the Wax Man in her—the same aspect of superiority—and he experienced a surge of resentment, which gave him extra strength. “You play the innocent lamb, don't you,” he said, “but in secret you are quite deranged.”

Her gaze remained lowered.

“Aye, lass,” Groves said, his lips trembling, “you can hide behind what you call your dreams, but I cannot be fooled. If you have secrets to spill, they will come out.”

She seemed resigned. “It is what everyone tells me.”

It seemed a further suggestion that there were other investigators involved. “Who?” he demanded again. “Who tells you this?”

She hesitated.

“I asked a question, woman.”

“My…my visitors.”

“What visitors are these?” He wondered if she meant the Sheriff or the Procurator Fiscal, or even the Wax Man himself. The notion that these men already knew all about Evelyn and her potential powers, and had preceded him with an interrogation, was terrible in its implications.

“Mr. Canavan,” she answered, “and the Professor.”

“Professor? What professor?”

She hesitated. “Thomas McKnight, Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh.”

Groves could recall no such man from his visit to the University and was suddenly convinced she was lying. To provoke him, perhaps; to make him
jealous
.

“He has questioned you, I suppose, this professor?”

“He believes I harbor hidden memories.”

“That's what he believes, is it?”

“He believes he can make me divulge my secrets.”

“Aye?” Groves snorted. “Well, there are many ways to divulge a woman's secrets.”

He took a tentative step forward—little more than an inch—but to his relief she did not rise up defensively.

“Do you know who I have spoken to, woman?”

No answer.

“Does the name Hettie Lessels mean anything to you?”

She averted her head, but the recognition was clear enough.

“Hettie Lessels,” Groves repeated with relish. “The woman remembers you, all right. And Abraham Lindsay?”

She looked further stung by the name.

“That's right.” Groves inched even closer, surprised by his own boldness, but then she had given no indication that she was about to turn on him. “Do you know what they said? What they said about you?”

She was barely audible. “What did they say?”

Groves twisted the truth adventurously. “That you despise them for what they did to you and that you are hunting them down for their sins. Aye.”

She did not deny it.

He slid a trembling hand into his greatcoat pocket and withdrew the examination of conscience, thrusting it at her like a cutlass. “You remember writing this, do you, woman?”

She kept her hands clasped in front of her, not wanting to accept the evidence. He tossed it at her and it spiraled to the floor like a loose feather.

“From your convent? Your letter to the devil? Do you not remember that?”

She stared at the settling sheet.

He risked stepping so close that he was practically breathing on her. “You have some pact with him, is that it? He does your bidding because of this pact?”

She backed away.

“You employ him for revenge, is that it?”

“No…” She pressed against the wall as though for protection.

“When will it end, woman? What will it take?”

“You have no evidence….”

“Aye?” Looking down on her cowed form Groves could barely tolerate his own excitement. “What do you call the testimony of my witnesses? Abraham Lindsay and the widow Lessels. What do you call that?”

“They have not—”

“What?”

“They have not spoken….”

“They have not spoken, have they? And yet I have heard them with my own ears.”

“They have not spoken!” she insisted.

“And how could that be?” he asked, nearly spitting on her. “Why do you think I might lie?”

“They would not make statements—”

“Aye? And why is that?”

“Because they would not want to damn themselves,”
she said finally, forcing it out, and sagged with the effort, so that he had to thrust his hand out to prevent her from collapsing. He squeezed her forearm, almost crushing her delicate bone, and drawing her to her feet he noticed that her sleeve had fallen back on her wrist, the whiteness of the skin there startling in contrast to her sooty hands, and—he could not be sure, for he had his back to the lamp—there seemed the remnant of something there, a
wound,
and he met her eyes for the first time. She regained her senses just enough to squirm free, dragging her sleeve over her hand and staring at him challengingly now, daring him to say something, to divulge this terrible secret, and he found himself suddenly enervated, staring back into her eyes and seeing the Wax Man's terrible spark, and he felt himself falling into her, being
absorbed
by her, and the blood surged in his head and his tongue struggled to conduct words, but he was oddly paralyzed…

The door burst open.

He was still staring at her, transfixed, when Evelyn finally broke the contact. Emerging from the spell, Groves turned to see a breathless Pringle looking at them in wonder, and he felt curiously ashamed.

“What is it?” he snapped.

“Mr…. Mr. Lindsay, sir,” Pringle said, still coming to terms with Evelyn's presence, and not sure if he should go on.

“What about him?”

“He's made a move, sir. By cab. You asked to be informed….”

Groves took an inordinate length of time to digest the news. “Aye,” he said eventually, as though he had expected nothing less. “So I did.”

And in truth he welcomed the excuse to escape, for his head was still pulsing and his lungs felt uncomfortably parched: Evelyn left too little oxygen in her proximity for another to breathe. But he had breached her defenses and weakened her for the next assault, he assured himself of that, and he would most certainly return to finish the battle.

“Let's…let's be off, then,” he said, and headed away at once—leaving Pringle to spare one last glance at the downcast Evelyn before pursuing the Inspector down the stairs.

Canavan stared at the pages incredulously. “All the books…” he whispered. “All incomplete?”

“Most are missing a few pages, and at the very least a few words.”

“Which…which books are most intact?”

“
The Science of Nervous Sleep
. Braid's
Neurypnology
. Teste's
Practical Manual of Animal Magnetism
. Anything related to hypnotism and its associated subjects. Evelyn clearly has been reading extensively on the matter in recent days.”

“But why?” Canavan asked, already dreading the answer.

“So that we might be prepared,” the Professor answered, and chortled mirthlessly. “Don't you see? Here in this library we have all the answers. The reason Shand's Wynd appears on no map. The reason we were able to face the Beast while we believed Evelyn could not be asleep. The reason we seem to have been specifically summoned. Even the reason my true identity has always eluded me. Here, in this murky library, lie all the answers.”

Canavan stared at him, awed but still needing to be convinced.

McKnight duly produced the apple. “Tell me what you see.”

Canavan shook his head. “An…an apple.”

“But as a symbol? What do you see?”

Canavan struggled. “The forbidden fruit…”

“A true theologian's answer.” McKnight smiled. “The apple with which the serpent tempted Eve. The symbol of all we were never meant to have but which we grasped anyway through temerity and impertinent curiosity. The icon of the unknowable, and lines which should not be crossed.” He raised the fruit and regarded it contemplatively. “But it is also, is it not, the symbol of Isaac Newton's universal gravitation and the immutable laws of science. Of everything we have learned and believe we have mastered—the single most important symbol of the Enlightenment. A truly significant irony, is it not? For though it has taken us many eons, we can now measure with great accuracy the speed with which an apple might have fallen from the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden.”

He lifted the red and green orb to the space between them. He fanned out his fingers until it was held by only his thumb and forefinger, then paused and released his hold entirely.

The apple, without any visible means of support, hung in midair, completely unmoving.

Canavan stared at it in astonishment.

“I believe we have an important duty to perform,” the Professor said, and the apple finally dropped.

That Evelyn had so easily slipped past him was a source of great embarrassment to Pringle, but oddly Groves did not seem in the mood to chasten him. Instead, the Inspector had his eyes set and his mouth sealed, and for a while seemed absorbed in his own musings, or working his way through the aftereffects of some serious shock.

“The news arrived while you were upstairs, sir,” Pringle explained hopefully as they rattled down Castle Terrace in a westbound cab. “Mr. Lindsay dispatched a messenger to the home of Hettie Lessels, summoning her to a meeting at a certain address in Atholl Crescent Lane.”

“Atholl Crescent Lane…” Groves finally muttered, still staring ahead blankly. “The Mirror Society.”

“Beg your pardon, sir?”

But Groves did not answer. “So we head there now?”

“That's right, sir. It was agreed that the widow Lessels should proceed as instructed to the meeting, secretly accompanied by her police escort. At about the same time Mr. Lindsay left his own premises. They would be there by now, I should think.”

“Together again…” Groves said, nodding somberly.

“I'm sorry, sir?”

But Groves fell silent.

Outside, a torrential blast of rain was lashing the streets and surging in the gutters; sheets of lightning flashed around the Castle ramparts. They swung into Rutland Street with the cab wheels sluicing through gurgling streams, and swept past the square to the corner of Atholl Crescent Lane. Here they were greeted by a lantern-bearing constable in a streaming waterproof.

“They're inside, sir,” the man said, leaning into the cab. “Some sort of meeting.”

“How many?” Groves asked.

“Three, far as we can tell. Lessels, the one called Lindsay, and someone else.”