Текст книги "The Bedlam Detective"

Автор книги: Stephen Gallagher

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A

LSO BY

S

TEPHEN

G

ALLAGHER:

Chimera

Follower

Valley of Lights

Oktober

Down River

Rain

The Boat House

Nightmare, with Angel

Red, Red Robin

White Bizango

Out of His Mind

The Spirit Box

The Painted Bride

Plots and Misadventures

The Kingdom of Bones

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by Stephen Gallagher

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gallagher, Stephen.

The bedlam detective : a novel / Stephen Gallagher.—1st ed.

p. cm.

1. Private investigators—England—Ficiton. 2. Rich people—England—Fiction. 3. Eccentrics and eccentricities—Fiction. 4. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6057.A3B93B43 2012

823’.91—dc22           2011018605

eISBN: 978-0-307-95278-3

Jacket design by Whitney Cookman

Jacket photography © Stephen Mulcahey/Arcangel Images

v3.1

Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Postscript

About the Author

 

It is no good casting out devils. They belong to us,

we must accept them and be at peace with them.

D. H. LAWRENCE

The Reality of Peace

1917

SEBASTIAN BECKER’S TRAIN HAD BEEN STANDING IN THIS LITTLE English rural stop for fifteen minutes or more. When he looked out through his compartment’s window the view fogged and cleared, fogged and cleared, adding an illusion of movement as the locomotive’s idling boiler vented its unused energies and a breeze drove the cloud vapor on down its flanks. Sebastian saw a landscape of field and hedgerow, hedgerow and West Country field, all the way out to the blue distant hills.

There was a railway guard working his way down the platform toward them, stopping at each compartment to ask the same question.

A glance around Sebastian’s companions in first class showed strangers, all. A fat man in tweeds. Two clerical men, and a woman with a child. The child was about eight years old and wore a sailor suit, much as Sebastian’s own son once had. A pint-sized sailor, on his way to the seaside. The plush fabric of the seat made the child’s bare legs itch. Whenever he squirmed his mother would reach for his arm and shake him, once, in silent remonstration.

She was a widow, still in the attire. The boy was pale and blue, like the cloth of his suit. It was as if he were his father’s only memorial, and she exercised her grief by keeping him scrubbed down to the marble.

She met Sebastian’s eye.

“Forgive me,” he said, and once more looked out the window.

How far were they now, from the sea? Fifteen, twenty miles?

The sprung latch on the carriage door opened with a sound like the bolt of a rifle. The door swung out and the train guard hauled himself up to stand on the footboard. He’d bypassed the third class compartment next door.

He was a man of some girth, and he was shining with perspiration. His thinning hair was the dark brown of a much younger man, but his thick mustache was mostly gray and ginger. He wore a watch chain and waistcoat and the uniform of the Great Western Railway.

“Pardon me,” he said breathlessly. “But is anyone here a medical man or an officer of the law?”

He spoke to the company in general but when his gaze lit upon Sebastian, his manner changed.

No one moved.

“I thought perhaps you, sir?” the guard persisted when Sebastian made no response.

Sebastian Becker could sense the eyes of everyone in the compartment upon him.

“I’m sorry, but no,” he said.

The guard seemed to hesitate, as if about to say something else. Then he accepted the rebuff and moved to withdraw.

One of the clerical men called after him.

“Excuse me,” he said, “but why have we stopped?”

“Just a slight problem in the baggage car, sir,” the train guard said. “The stationmaster and I are having a difference of opinion over what’s to be done about it.”

The door closed with a bang. And that was that.

There was some shifting and throat-clearing in the compartment, but apart from something murmured by the fat man no one spoke. Back in America, Sebastian thought, the guard’s departure would have been the cue for some lively speculation and debate between strangers. But here, there followed a strained and British silence.

The guard was repeating his question next door to the third class people, this time with no Pardon me.

Sebastian opened his book and pretended to read, but it was of no use.

Eventually he closed the book and got to his feet.

“Excuse me,” he said, and opened the compartment door to climb down after the guard.

SEBASTIAN HAD once seen half of a man’s head blown clean off, gone from the eye sockets up. It had been done from behind, with a shot from a hunting rifle at a range of inches. Two men held the victim’s arms and forced him to kneel. The man with the rifle called a warning as he fired, so that his friends might turn their faces away—not to be spared the sight, but to avoid the spray. Sebastian could do nothing. He was part of a mob that had, only minutes before, been a peaceful labor meeting. To drop his disguise would have been certain suicide.

Although his evidence had later helped to hang two of the men, the hour stood in his memory as one of shame. He might have intervened; he had not. The fact that he was a Pinkerton man and undercover, and that the mob would have turned on him in an instant, somehow counted for little after the event.

Others agreed. Complete strangers were generous with their views on how he could and should have acted. You could of said something abt. the sky and then taken the gun off the shooter when he was looking up and turned it onto him, wrote one correspondent. That is surely what I would of done in yr place. And after his court appearance, another with differing loyalties wrote, On your word two good men will hang. The scab only got what he deserved and some day so will you.

A return to England, the land of Sebastian’s birth, had been Elisabeth’s idea. She sold her jewelry to buy them steamer tickets. It meant a fresh start, but a step down in fortune. Sebastian Becker now lived in London, and drew his modest pay from the coffers of England’s Lord Chancellor.

They were not rich. But he had his one decent suit of clothes, and a certain authority. An agent of justice once again, he now served as the special investigator to the Masters of Lunacy.

“I WAS a detective once,” he said. “But a mere civil servant now.”

“Nevertheless, sir,” the guard said, “I’ll ask you for your guidance and I’ll value your opinion.”

“On what?”

“Please. This way.”

As they began to move, he signaled to the stationmaster. The stationmaster saw the wave and broke off an argument with a third class passenger hanging out one of the end carriage windows.

The train was a cross-country set, pulled by a tank engine. A full quarter of its length was taken up by the luggage van. British holiday passengers rarely traveled light. They’d arrive at their lodgings in a caravan of trunks, suitcases, and hatboxes, more appropriate to a house move than a weeklong stay. Many would even pack food, as if a Minehead or a Weymouth were some far-off and foreign place with unreliable supplies.

But this was the season’s end. And a wet and disappointing season that 1912 summer had been. The train was less than half full.

As they walked up the platform the guard said, “I expect you’re wondering how I had you singled out, back there.”

“My travel warrant,” Sebastian said, to the guard’s disappointment. “I assume you noted the crest on it.”

The stationmaster caught up, and by the time they reached the luggage van they were four: Sebastian, the guard, the stationmaster, and the stationmaster’s gormless-looking lad who’d appeared from nowhere. The lad wore a porter’s uniform and a haircut that looked as if it had been inflicted on him in a dark alleyway. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen, but he was wiry.

“In here,” said the stationmaster, and once they were inside the station’s baggage room he closed the doors behind them and drew down the blinds.

There was a wall of numbered cubbies for bags and suitcases, but most of the room was open floor space for setting out baskets and dry goods. A second set of doors opened into a lane behind the station.

And there was a stink; a pungency somewhere between vinegar and turpentine, without quite being either. Sebastian knew it, and knew it far too well. It took him back to his first job in uniform, and memories of mortuary visits on hot summer evenings.

“Here, sir.”

The station’s platform cart had been dragged into the room. A leaking crate stood upon it. The side of the crate had been opened, with some of its boards prized off and then replaced loose to shield the contents from view.

The three railway employees stood watching him, and none offered to explain. So he moved the loose boards and looked inside.

Inside the crate was a cylindrical, glass-lidded tank, roped into place. Folded blankets had been wedged in around the sides to cushion it. Staring out at him, crammed in like so much colorless fruit in a preserving jar, was a small dead freak.

Or two dead freaks that shared a head. Opinions might vary. It was as if in creation their faces had been mashed together to make one three-eyed, two-mouthed horror. Their bodies, as far as he could see, were normal.

To get them into the jar they’d been arranged in a tight embrace, arms wrapped around each other as if clinging in terror to the only reassurance that either of them knew. Their limbs must have softened, to fit the space in the jar so closely. The lid had been sealed on with strips of tarred linen.

The stationmaster said, “There are five more boxes like this on the train. We’re supposed to hold them for collection.”

Sebastian looked up at him.

“And?”

“That is some kind of a human child, is it not?”

Sebastian considered. He’d been expecting something suspicious concerning a trunk. Trunk murders, most of them involving dismemberment and left-luggage offices, were an enduring British obsession. He could recall one that had proved to be a consignment of theatrical costumes, unlaundered and reeking of glue and the sweat of performance.

This was something else.

He took a moment longer. Then he said, “I believe this should properly be called a specimen. Do you not recognize that rank smell?”

The three looked blank.

“It’s formaldehyde.”

Two of the three did their best to look enlightened.

He indicated the stain around the crate. “It’s either leaked or spilled. What happened here?”

With a pointed look at the lad, the guard said, “There was a mishap as the box was taken from the wagon. The box was dropped, something broke, and the smell came right after.”

The boy might have been looking embarrassed, but it was hard to tell. His expression barely changed.

The stationmaster said, “I stopped the unloading and took a decision to open the box. Specimen or no, sir, is there no special law to cover the transport of the dead?”

“You’d know that better than I would,” Sebastian said. “Who’s the owner of the crate?”

The guard handed him the consignment papers, and he gave them a quick look-over. The boxes had been packed and shipped by a carrier in New York. The contents of the six crates were described as “curiosities” and were to be collected by one Abraham Sedgewick or his representative.

Sebastian looked at the stationmaster. He said, “Do you know this Abraham Sedgewick? Is he a local man?”

The stationmaster made a small and helpless gesture, but the lad chipped in and spoke for the first time.

“Sedgewick’s Fair is passing through on Thursday,” he said.

Sebastian considered for a moment. “Well,” he said. “A fair. That makes a kind of sense. Does it not?”

They were all looking at him and expecting more.

Sebastian went on, “Created as specimens, bought to be exhibits. Destined for display in some fairground sideshow.”

“Specimens, exhibits,” the stationmaster said. “I don’t care what you call them. They’re dead bodies, and I don’t want them in my station.”

“Well,” the guard said, “they can’t stay on my train.”

They looked to Sebastian for some kind of adjudication. He realized that what they’d been seeking was neither a doctor nor a policeman, but a Solomon.

Meanwhile, his train stood waiting. And there was an urgency to his mission that, though he could not advertise it, argued against delay.

The fact of it was that he had no answer. Freak or not, these were human remains and there was probably some law to govern their storage and use. His employer might know. But Sir James was up in Dundee for the week, giving an address to the British Association.

He gave the bottled specimen a more intense inspection. Here, only inches from the glass, the smell of formaldehyde was almost overpowering.

He had an idea.

He said, “Have you opened any of the other boxes?”

“No,” the stationmaster said.

“Have you taken a close look at this?”

“As close as any man would care to.”

“Look,” he said, and beckoned the man in. “Get close enough and you can see a faint crazing pattern in the surface of the skin. What does that tell you?”

The stationmaster opened and closed his mouth and then was about to shrug, so Sebastian told him.

“I think you’ll find that what you’re looking at may not be flesh, but …”

“Wax!” the guard said suddenly.

The stationmaster seemed doubtful. He regarded the freak through its glass and said, “They’re waxworks?”

“Have you never heard of such a thing? Anatomical models. Bottled up in spirits of alcohol for a showman’s trick. Of course,” he added for safety, “that’s only my guess.”

Then he looked into the milky eyes of the three-eyed freak, and the dead freak stared ahead and through him as if refusing to meet his gaze.

He felt a touch of guilt.

But hadn’t he witnessed worse things in this world? And the freak was long dead.

And as for the guard, he had all the answer that he needed.

He clapped his hands together. “Right,” he said. “I’ll have the rest of your goods off my train and we’ll be on our way.”

As the lad went to unload the other crates, the stationmaster crouched down and peered more closely into the jar. All of his reticence was forgotten now.

“A waxwork,” the stationmaster said, and he looked up at Sebastian with a face of wonder where, before, there had been only disgust.

“Indeed,” said Sebastian.

“Who’d have imagined that?” the stationmaster said. “You don’t see it till you really look.”

THE UNLOADING of the boxes took another fifteen minutes. Once the train was moving again, Sebastian opened his book and tried to read.

The reading was not for pleasure; behind the content of the book lay one of the reasons for his journey. If he arrived too late to seek out the author this afternoon, he could finish it in his hotel.

He was keeping alive a glimmer of hope for a decent supper. His warrant might give him first class travel out of London, but the restaurant car was beyond his means.

To those hopes of a quiet evening and a decent supper he added another, which was not to dream of carnival freaks in a strange bed.

In the event, he did not. But only because worse was to come, before the day was out.

AFTER THE GOODS DISPUTE AND AN UNSCHEDULED CROSSROADS stop to pick up some soldiers, Sebastian reached his destination almost an hour late. There was an address on the slip of paper that he’d been using as a bookmark. He took it out to check it now. He had a room reserved by telegram at the Sun Inn, Arnmouth.

Arnmouth was a resort that had been established close to an estuary, where the lack of a suitable bridging point had sent the railway line inland. Which meant that the station was more than a mile from the town, with a horse wagon service to carry passengers and their luggage over the final leg of the journey.

Sebastian had no luggage to speak of, just his usual leather Gladstone. While the other passengers were seeing their bags onto the station wagon, he watched the soldiers climbing into the back of a waiting motor truck. They were a squad of teenaged boys and a gray-headed sergeant. All had ridden the last few miles together in the baggage car. Their transport now was a petrol-driven three-tonner with cart wheels and a canvas cover, and an engine noise like spanners tumbling in a drum.

A young railwayman closed up the tailgate after the soldiers. He’d been blasted with soot at some point in his working day, so that when he turned around to the horse wagon his eyes were a startling blue in contrast to his blackened skin and shirt collar.

“Sorry for any delay, ladies and gentlemen,” he called up to the passengers as their horse shied and stamped.

“No apology required,” one of Sebastian’s fellow passengers called back. “We don’t argue with the King’s Own. Is it for the maneuvers?”

“A little local emergency they’re helping us out with,” the railwayman said. Sebastian felt his senses sharpen. But the young man was already walking away.

The final leg of Sebastian’s journey took about twenty minutes through country lanes. Arnmouth was a onetime fishing village that had grown for the summer crowds as far as its situation would allow. His first sight was of a clock tower and municipal welcome garden at the top of the main street. A dense bed of roadside flowers spelled out the town’s name on a sloping bank.

Their wagon made its way down the street, which wasn’t long. An observer could feasibly stand at one end of it and hail to a friend at the other. The street was lined with fancy shops, fine hotels, and tall houses made of the local stone.

Something was definitely amiss. Shopkeepers were outside their doors, exchanging words while their shops stood empty. A group of women had gathered on a corner. None of them paid the station wagon any attention as it went by.

The Sun Inn was at the end of the main street, where the street made a sharp turn down to the harbor. It was an old coaching inn, with an archway to its stables and a view out over dunes and the estuary strand.

Sebastian tipped the driver sixpence and climbed down with his bag. Then he glanced back up the street. The local women were too far off for him to do more than read their attitudes. Some stood with their arms folded. They glanced around as they talked.

The driver inspected the sixpence, sniffed wetly, and then pocketed the coin as he flicked the reins to move on.

THE TWO STEPS up from the pavement into the inn were edged with heavy iron. Once off the street, Sebastian found himself in a low-ceilinged and gloomy interior. Except for a few stuffed sea birds on a shelf above the mantel, he was alone. There was a mahogany bar counter with a backdrop of bottles, mirrors, and crystal. On one paneled wall was an engraved print of the barquentine Waterwitch, and on another a picture frame with samples of sailors’ knots behind glass.

He’d found solitude, but not silence. At the far end of the saloon bar was a partition. Beyond the partition was the snug, where the floor would be bare wood and the beer a halfpenny cheaper, and from which came the noise of a crowd of men. Sebastian paused for a moment to listen in case he could make out what was being discussed with so much enthusiasm, but he could not.

He reached over the bar to where a brass ship’s bell hung, and tweaked the clapper so it rang once.

All went quiet. Then a head popped around the bar side of the partition. It belonged to a large, unshaven man wearing—from what Sebastian could see—a parish constable’s uniform with a touch of the rummage-box in its fit and condition.

His expression was of one poised for abuse, but that changed at the sight of a gent.

“Just hold on,” he said, and disappeared again. A few moments later Sebastian heard the muffled shout of a name somewhere in the back of the inn. Moments after that, the noise in the snug returned to its previous level.

A woman in cook’s whites appeared, bringing with her a waft of warm kitchen air. She was short and broad and homely.

“Good afternoon, sir,” she said.

“Sebastian Becker,” he said. “I’ve a reservation.”

“A reservation?”

“Sorry. A booking. I sent a telegram.”

She went behind the bar counter and reached down for a visitors’ book. “A reservation,” she said, as if it was a word that she didn’t hear too often. “You speak a little like an American gentleman, Mister Becker.”

“My wife’s American. I spent some years there. I often slip.”

He scratched his name in the book with the pen that she gave him.

As he was writing she said, with due apology, “I’m afraid there’s no one to take your bag upstairs.”

“I can manage that for myself,” Sebastian said. “What’s going on?”

“Two children are missing,” the cook said.

Sebastian abruptly laid down his pen.

“Tell me more,” he said.

“Oh, it’s probably something and nothing,” she said. “They didn’t come home for supper last night. It’s a family that takes Rose Villa every year. The girls run wild all summer and Mister Bell comes up at weekends. Everyone in town knows them. They’re always out and about.” And she blew on the ink of his signature to help dry it before closing up the book and returning it to its place under the counter. “You watch. They’ll appear. In tears and all sorry for the trouble they’ve caused.”

Sebastian said, “How long have they been gone?”

“Only since yesterday. My opinion is that they’re on an adventure. Stayed out all night and now they’re scared to come home.” She tried to give a little smile, but anxiety betrayed her.

“And in there?” He indicated the activity on the other side of the snug partition.

“They’ve sent us a county detective,” she said. “He’s organizing a search. Or trying to.”

With the guest book safely away, she took a room key from a hook board behind the bar. All the keys had wooden tags and all the tags bore the names of sea birds in handwritten script.

Sebastian said, “Tell me something. How do I get to Arnside Hall?”

“Sir Owain’s house?” the cook said.

“Sir Owain Lancaster, yes.”

“You won’t get there today. There’s no one to drive you.”

“Because everyone’s on the search.”

“They’ve even called in some soldiers.”

“Now I understand,” Sebastian said.

THE WOMAN had expressed hope. But knowing what he knew, Sebastian already feared the worst. Up in the Sandpiper Room, which was of a generous size and had an oak-framed bed and plain whitewashed walls, he laid out his soap and his razor on the washstand and placed Sir Owain Lancaster’s notorious book on the bedside table. Next to it he laid a handwritten list, and a typewritten letter.

He could hear voices from below. This room was directly above the snug. Every now and again, a phrase or a few words would come through. Someone was trying to organize the volunteers, and all the volunteers seemed to be arguing with their directions.

Sebastian moved to his window and looked out. His window overlooked the shore. From here he could see the river snaking out through a deep cut in the sand toward the distant sea. Beyond the river, fanning out toward the far horizon, stretched an enormous and probably treacherous tidal beach. Way out across the flats, so far off that they were but sketchy figures in a vast landscape, a dozen men with staffs had formed a line and were moving across the bay, checking pools and quicksands. The local police would be few in number, bolstered by volunteers, and none would have been trained for such an operation.

Sebastian looked back over his shoulder at the bedside table. Sir Owain’s book purported to be an account of an ill-fated expedition somewhere in the region of the Amazon basin, led by its author. Its publication had caused a scandal and the destruction of Sir Owain’s reputation, forcing him to abandon his town house in London and retreat out here to his country home. The implications for its author’s mental state were a significant part of the reason for Sebastian’s visit. His regular duties involved investigating the background and circumstances of persons of interest to the Lord Chancellor’s Visitor in Lunacy.

In this instance, the list and the letter added a sinister dimension to his mission. The disappearance of children now added another.

The lock on the bedroom door was hardly substantial, and the board of keys behind the bar was far from secure. He went over to the table and gathered up the list and letter, slipping them inside the pages of Sir Owain’s book. Then he hid the book under the pillow bolster and remade the bed over it, tucking in the sheets, blankets, and coverlet to make them as ruthlessly taut as before.

Then he went downstairs and across the empty saloon and opened the door to pass through into the snug.

And to the sudden silence that greeted him, he said, “Who’s in charge?”