Текст книги "The Bedlam Detective"

Автор книги: Stephen Gallagher

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

Grace said, “Go back, Evangeline. Go back to London. The last thing you want is to find what you’re looking for.”

“I wish I could remember, Grace,” Evangeline said simply.

“No, you don’t.”

“Won’t you help me?”

“Nothing I can do.”

Grace walked her as far as the gate, where Evangeline said, “Those two dead children. They could have been you and me.”

“Sir Owain says they were torn by beasts,” Grace said. “I don’t think he’s far wrong.”

Evangeline gave it one last try. “What do you know, Grace?” she said.

“No more than you,” Grace said.

Again, Evangeline had to wheel the bicycle over rough ground to the main track. Grace did not stay to wave her off. She felt a hollow space inside her for the friend she once thought she’d keep forever, but must now acknowledge that she’d lost.

So Sebastian Becker was actually the Lunacy Visitor’s man and had his sights set on Sir Owain? That was a detail that he and Stephen Reed had chosen not to share.

Instead of pointing the bicycle toward Arnmouth village and home, she turned it toward Sir Owain and the Hall.

THE FAIRGROUNDS CAME INTO SIGHT, OCCUPYING THREE FIELDS on the outskirts of a small market town. It was almost evening now, and the lanes all around were dense with people making their way to the entertainment. The car had to slow to nose through them; the crowd treated the Daimler as part of the day’s spectacle, a piece of road jewelry as exotic as any sight they’d come to see.

First came the noise. Not one Marenghi organ, but a dozen, each one cranked up to drown out its neighbor. Heard at this distance, their tunes varied as the wind changed.

There was a gateway of painted scenery and electric bulbs that turned the entrance of a common field into a portal of wonders. Beyond it, a bazaar of light and noise. The fair was a portable city of tents and boards, of wooden towers and brilliantly decorated show fronts. Among the temporary buildings stood mighty engines like Babylonian elephants, all crashing pistons and blowing steam, powering the rides with their belts and dynamos.

The car didn’t enter the grounds, but was waved on to a field above them where provision had been made for motor vehicles and wagons. It was grazing land, unplowed, and the ground was poor. Sebastian had to clutch at a hanging strap as the Daimler bumped over ruts to find a level spot in the grass.

When they came to a stop, Thomas Arnot turned off the engine and the two men climbed out.

The entire site could be observed from here. Looking down on the contained land of people, planks, and canvas, the driver said, “I don’t see any menagerie.”

“There’s horses,” Sebastian said.

“You get horses anywhere.”

He took the camera and left the driver standing guard on the Daimler, observing the show field from its running board. Some boys were trying to get Arnot’s attention, probably to ask if they could climb up and have a sit behind the wheel, but he was ignoring them.

Down in the field, Sebastian quickly found what he was looking for. Bordering one side of the fairground was an entire row of attractions, each with a walk-up platform and a show front. Each had a barker and some had demure dancing girls, in full white skirts and ankle socks. The barkers were playing hard to the crowds, but it was still early and the crowds were sparse.

The show fronts were decorated to an astonishing standard, every one a rococo basilica of gilt and paint and gingerbread. The grandest of them all was the Electric Coliseum, a veritable cathedral face built around an eighty-seven-key Gavioli organ. Little matter that it was pure illusion, all scaffolding and panels that would pack down into a line of wagons when it was time to move on. It promised awe and glory, and all for pennies.

The Electric Coliseum was a Bioscope show, exhibiting a program of moving pictures. A show would run around twenty minutes, each one containing four or five subjects, always ending with a comedy.

Still carrying his parcel, Sebastian went to the Electric Coliseum’s pay booth.

To the woman in the booth, he said, “Who’s in charge?”

“Why?”

“I want to talk to the boss.”

“Mister Sedgewick’s inside. Oi.”

Sebastian was halfway up the steps to the walk-up platform.

“That’s sixpence, thank you, sir,” she said in a voice that managed to combine a superficial courtesy with a deeper sense of menace.

He went back to the booth and paid up.

So Sedgewick himself ran the show. That was no surprise. The man with his name on the fair was likely to own most of it, and from its size and its position in the grounds the Electric Coliseum was one of the fair’s grandest attractions.

That said, the tent was only one-third full. Sebastian took a seat. The subject playing was a comedy chase titled The Plumber and the Lunatics. It was a simple story, and built around a single joke—that of a plumber dropping his knife in an asylum, and running in terror from two inmates who were merely attempting to return it to him. But the audience liked it well enough.

Then came a short film of some local parade, which seemed to last forever but which actually ran for three minutes. The grand finale was a novelty Vivaphone subject, in which film projection and a Gramophone record were roughly combined to present an actor in blackface and boxing garb performing The Night I Fought Jack Johnson.

When all was done, an imposing bearded man in a tailcoat appeared before the screen and called out, “Side exits, please, ladies and gentlemen, and tell all your friends that our program changes daily.” Whereupon the Gavioli struck up and the floor shook with its bass notes as the audience flocked out into the fading daylight.

Waiting to be among the last of them, Sebastian stayed back and got the bearded man’s attention.

“Are you Abraham Sedgewick?”

The man turned. He was half a head taller than Sebastian. His beard was streaked with gray and his morning suit was faintly shabby, as formal clothing would be if one’s workplace was a field.

He said, “Who would be asking?”

“Sebastian Becker. I’m the one who stepped in to release your consignment of curiosities on the railway. Did you take delivery?”

“The specimens? Yes, I did. And I heard the story. Waxworks, eh?”

“I’m in the area on the Lord Chancellor’s business.” Sebastian took out his letters of authority and showed Sedgewick the crest. He said, “I’m trying to do something for those two girls killed in Arnmouth.”

“An appalling affair. Is it a charity benefit you’re looking for?”

“No!” Sebastian said quickly. “No. I’m looking for your professional help.” He gestured toward the picture screen and said, “Over at the Wild West show they told me that you make these entertainments as well as screening them.”

“We do.”

Sebastian tore away the brown paper wrapping to reveal the Birtac camera.

He said, “Then I think you’re the person I need. This was found at the scene. I’m told that it’s a moving-picture camera. I believe there may be exposed images in it. I would very much like to know what they are.”

Sedgewick took the camera from him and turned it around in his hands. Over on the other side of the tent, people were beginning to enter for the next show.

Sedgewick said, “Exposed film can be easily spoiled. Has anyone opened this?”

“I can’t be sure, but I sincerely hope not.”

Mindful of the paying customers, Sedgewick indicated for Sebastian to follow him. They made their way around to the projection booth, separated from the exhibition space by a fireproofed wall.

In this cramped room, dominated by the projection apparatus and smelling of ozone and naphtha and nitrates, a young man was cranking a handle to rewind a film spool for the next show.

Sedgewick introduced him as Will. Just Will. The young man was in white shirtsleeves and a buttoned-up waistcoat. Barely out of his teens, he had a wisp of a mustache and beard.

It took Sebastian a moment to recognize him as the Second Lunatic from the short that he’d just seen. Sedgewick showed Will the Birtac camera and said, “Ever seen one of these? Don’t open it, there’s film inside.”

Will took it and looked it over, much as the older man had. He shook his head.

“It’s amateur’s kit. A new one on me, boss.”

Sedgewick went on, “We’re doing a good deed for those poor little girls. Sort this gentleman out with whatever he needs.”

SEBASTIAN FOLLOWED Will out of the Bioscope tent and into the part of the showground away from the public area. The growing noise of the crowd and the steady roar of the fairground organs seemed muted here; the noise of the steam traction engines did not. Sebastian had to duck through washing and avoid tripping on heavy cables as he followed Will through.

Will looked back over his shoulder and said, “We don’t develop much film these days. My father made a deal with Gaumont. They give us raw stock, we make the scenes, and they develop it for free. For that Dad lets them sell our subjects outside the area. Watch yourself. The third step’s loose.”

He was ascending to a door into a square-sided wagon that stood some yards apart from all the others. Despite the warning, Sebastian almost stumbled on the third step. Will switched on an electric light.

There was a bench down one side of the wagon. Strips of moving picture film hung from clotheslines above it, all of differing lengths, stirring in the draft from the door like the tails of so many kites. Metal film cans were stacked high on every surface, and on the wall a large hand-painted notice warned of the dangers of sparks and naked flames.

Will said, “This calls for the nuns’ drawers.”

“The what?” Sebastian said.

Will flushed slightly as he realized that he’d spoken without thinking. “Sorry,” he said.

He reached under the bench and produced a black velvet bag with two sleeves. The camera went inside, and the bag was sealed. Will then put his hands in through the sleeves, which were elasticated for a light-tight fit around his forearms.

He fiddled around inside the bag for a while. Sebastian heard the catch go, and the sound of the camera body coming open. Will made faces and stared off into nowhere as he explored the innards of the machine, like a blind man feeling his way around the works of a pocket watch.

“Yep,” he said. “It’s amateur gauge.”

“What does that mean?”

“Half the width of the film we use. Smaller film, smaller image, costs less money. Looks awful on a big screen but good enough in your living room.”

“Is that a problem for you?”

“Give me an hour.”

MISS BANCROFT,” SIR OWAIN SAID. “NEVER WAS THERE A FAIRER sight on a bicycle.”

“I didn’t think you’d recognize me.”

“I barely did, you’ve so much changed. Quite the young city woman, now. Are you visiting your mother?”

“I am. But I want to talk to you about Grace Eccles.”

“Ah.”

They were in one of the house’s galleries, long and vaulted and painted in a deep red. Sir Owain had been cataloguing when she arrived. The gallery contained his collections of seashells and geological specimens, stuffed birds under glass, and sculpture of a morbid character.

Sir Owain was much changed from the man she remembered. He’d always been a figure of consequence in the area. A vigorous presence, he now seemed diminished. She was moved by his air of vulnerability.

She said, “Grace is my oldest friend.”

“Then perhaps,” Dr. Sibley said, “you might have some influence with her?”

Even without Grace’s forewarning, it would have taken Evangeline less than two minutes to form a dislike of Dr. Ernest Hubert Sibley.

She said, “To help you persuade her out of her home, do you mean? Quite the opposite. I’m here to ask you to leave her alone.”

“Now, Evangeline,” Sir Owain broke in. “Nobody wants to force her to anything.”

“However,” Dr. Sibley said firmly. Sir Owain fell silent.

Dr. Sibley went on, “You may know that I’m responsible for ensuring that Sir Owain manages his affairs with visible competence. I can tell you there really is no question over Sir Owain’s health. There are doubters, but they have their own motives. It’s essential not to provide them with the means to do him damage. You do understand?”

She didn’t understand. She said, “How does that concern Grace?”

“Grace Eccles is living on land that was granted to her father. The lease expired when her father died.”

“She inherited.”

“She imagines that.”

“Is it a matter of money? You must know she has none. I’ve seen how she lives. She can barely keep herself.”

“It’s not a matter of money. It’s a matter of good administration.”

“Pardon me,” Evangeline said. “But that sounds heartless.”

“It’s not heartless,” the doctor said, unhappy with the turn that this had taken; he seemed to be a man more used to giving instruction than to being met with argument. “It’s business. And an estate must be seen to be run in a businesslike manner.”

“God forbid that we should value human decency over bookkeeping.”

Sir Owain, who’d grown visibly uncomfortable, said to Evangeline, “But what would you have us do?”

“Just let her be,” Evangeline said, and she gestured to include the gallery and all its works and the great labyrinth of the house beyond it. “You have all this, and she has so little. Why would you deprive her of it?”

Dr. Sibley said, “I take it we needn’t look for help from you, then.”

“To see my best friend rendered destitute? No. And if your main concern is to keep your employer from looking bad, victimizing a tenant seems hardly the way to do it.”

That shut him up, for a moment.

Sir Owain said, “Evangeline—you said it yourself. She is destitute. I had fears for her life last winter.”

“With no home and no land for her horses, how would you expect her to live at all? Will you give her a job? Can you imagine Grace in service?”

“The parish would support her,” Dr. Sibley said. “And Sir Owain has long been a great supporter of the parish.”

“Then why not live and let live, and cut out the parish altogether?”

The doctor opened his mouth, found himself lost for a reply, and closed it again.

Then he tried a different tack. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I assumed that a friend would help a friend. Especially two people who have been through so much.” And he put a meaningful emphasis on that final phrase, as if he expected her to understand what he meant by it.

“Grace and I have not met in years,” she said.

He persisted. “But some experiences can leave a permanent mark. Do you not find? Sometimes help is required to move forward. If you wish, I can offer you a consultation.”

She felt herself flush. She said, “You may be Sir Owain’s doctor, but you are not mine. So this is inappropriate.”

His face didn’t move. But his eyes went cold, as if she’d slapped it.

He made an as you wish gesture and withdrew from the discussion. He seated himself on a padded gallery bench and looked pointedly away, as Sir Owain inquired after her mother’s health and attempted to rescue the occasion to some degree.

And when that was done, and Sir Owain escorted her toward the entrance hall, the doctor took his time before rising to follow.

When he believed they were out of the doctor’s earshot, Sir Owain lowered his voice and said, “Forgive me for all this. My life is no longer my own.”

She glanced back, to be certain they were not overheard.

She said, “What’s brought you to this position?”

“Sheer necessity,” Sir Owain said. “The Lord Chancellor will have my land and all my patents, and I a room with a lock on the door, if I am judged unfit. The Visitor’s man came. He suspects me of many things, none of which I’m guilty of. But those children who died. They haunt me now.”

“Why?”

“What if I could have prevented their suffering by speaking out when I had the chance? Instead of falling silent in my own best interests.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I saw such things on my travels. Secret creatures that I fear may have followed me home. Capable of incalculable harm. But when I published my account …”

He said no more, because Dr. Sibley had caught up with them. They’d reached the steps outside the building.

“It’s getting late, Evangeline,” Sir Owain said. “Perhaps you should wait, under the circumstances. I can have Thomas drive you back, when he returns.”

“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I won’t stop for anyone.”

“Or anything,” Sir Owain suggested pointedly.

Dr. Sibley offered to steady her bicycle as she climbed astride it.

As Sir Owain returned to the top of the steps, the doctor said to her in a low voice, “I do what I can. But perhaps now you can begin to understand.”

SHE’D BARELY covered the first hundred yards before she was forced to concede, with some disquiet, that Sir Owain had been right about the hour. This had been an unplanned addition to her day, and she’d stayed out too long. The light had already faded to the point where the track was blending into the moor and the moor was blending into the sky.

There was an electric lamp on the front of the bicycle’s basket. She stood up on the pedals so that she could reach over the handlebars to switch it on. It made no difference so she switched it off again, to save what remained of the battery until it might be more effective.

She wondered about the possibility of stopping on the way back and asking to spend the night with Grace in her cottage. Grace surely wouldn’t say no. But given these recent events, what would her mother think if she didn’t return? The worst, for sure.

Better to press on, and beat the fall of night. Evangeline tried to think more of her mother’s worry, in order to dwell less on her own. She’d no fear of breezy open daytime spaces. The moors after dark would be another matter.

How far was it? Two miles? Three? Half an hour’s ride, perhaps, if she kept up a steady speed and didn’t coast. She’d surely have some level of visibility for half an hour. She might end the ride in deepening gloom, but by then there would be the town to aim for. She’d be like the fishing boats, making toward the harbor lights at the end of the day.

When she passed Grace’s cottage, she didn’t slow. Then realized that she hadn’t even seen the turnoff until it had gone by. Looking down from the track she was able to make out the cottage roof by the gray smoke rising into the deeper gray of the sky, but no light escaped its shuttered windows.

By day the house’s isolation had seemed romantic, almost poetic. But at night, simply unwise. A late visitor might cause a panic; she imagined being Grace, inside her home and hearing a sudden banging at the door. How brave Grace must be, to live so far out here alone, where no cry would be heard, and with no help at hand. If she was not brave, then she was foolish. Or perhaps simply desperate—as Grace herself had pointed out, her choices were limited.

Evangeline rose in the saddle as her wheels jolted over a rock. She dropped back hard, but did not slow. It was easy to imagine that something was behind her, breathing on her back, its presence growing as she pedaled. She might have a rational mind, but no one has a rational soul. Whatever dogged her, it did not go away, but kept a distance as if biding its time.

THE DAIMLER WAS NOWHERE TO BE SEEN. SEBASTIAN WANDERED the field among grazing horses and factory trucks that had been pressed into service for workers’ outings, thinking that perhaps Sir Owain’s man had moved the car to a safer spot. But he had a growing suspicion that he’d moved it rather more.

He stopped a couple of people and asked them. No one had seen the man or the car.

He went back to the lower field and wandered the fairground for a while, keeping an eye open for the driver. Alone at the fair, he felt awkward.

It was a long time since he’d attended such a thing for his own pleasure. The freaks, the puppet shows, the hurdy-gurdy men. A father’s role was to take along his family, and to stand back and draw his satisfaction from their amusement. He was too old to be a target for the flirtatious groups of factory girls, too respectable-looking to be hailed and challenged as he passed the boxing booth. The pitchmen on the stalls called over his head, to less sober and more likely-looking marks. He felt, to all intents and purposes, like an invisible man.

He passed the freak show a couple of times, and on the third pass he paid the money and went inside. Everyone was crowded in shoulder-to-shoulder: the nervous, the curious, the callow, and the near-hysterical. They shuffled around slowly under the harsh electric bulbs, following a course from entrance to exit. At the front of the show was a “six-legged calf,” actually an animal with bifurcated forelegs that could not support its weight. It crawled about its stall on callused knees, trying to reach a few scraps of hay that had fallen from its feeding trough. Around the corner was the fat lady, seated on a stool and knitting to pass the time. She was large, but not so large as to be worth paying to see. Then there was the usual Fiji Mermaid in a glass case, half dead monkey, half dried fish, the two halves stitched together by a taxidermist’s needle.

Last of all, in a partitioned area at the back, forbidden to children and costing an extra penny, there were the Seven Freaks of Nature. Their signage was freshly painted, so the smell of glue size mingled with the lingering odor of formaldehyde. Some balked at the extra charge, but most paid up and went through the bead curtain to see what was there.

The specimens of human tissue included a pair of lungs, one from a city dweller and the other belonging to a country person. The city dweller’s lung was gray and mottled, rather like a bad green cheese. The countryman’s lung was drained and lifeless but comparatively pink. There was a preserved half of a brain. A human uterus. A child’s healthy heart, white as folded silk as it hung there in the preserving fluid.

Among the severed heads and flayed torsos and part-dissected limbs, Sebastian found his friends from the train. They now bore the name Lusus Naturae, The Human Monster, but were otherwise as before; their heads merged in some fantastical lovers’ kiss, their arms around each other in a fearful embrace. Unable to function in life, earning their keep in death.

He stood before their jar for a while, until pressure from the crowd behind him moved him on. As he emerged back into the fairground, he saw Will pushing through on some urgent-seeming errand with a case of lightbulbs, and managed to catch his eye.

“Your film’s done, it’s drying now,” the young man said. “If you can stick it out until the last show, we can put your pictures on the big screen afterward.”

“I may as well,” Sebastian said. “My driver appears to have abandoned me.”

WHEN THE last comedy ended and the audience left, Sebastian stayed behind. All through the program of subjects, his heart had been hammering. Now he realized why. It had nothing to do with the show that he’d seen. It was for the show yet to come. Not an involuntary excitement, but an involuntary dread.

No one appeared for a while, and he wondered if they’d forgotten him. The lights on the show front were extinguished, one set after another.

But then Will arrived, carrying a heavy metal spool with not very much film on it. Sebastian followed him into the projection booth, where he watched as the young man loaded the spool onto the projector arm and threaded up the film. Sedgewick joined them before the operation was done, along with a couple of others, sideshow workers drawn by curiosity at the mention of the dead girls’ moving pictures.

“Close the doors,” Sedgewick said to them, “and put a chair across.”

The tent was secured and made private. According to Will, the Birtac was an amateur’s camera designed with a double function. With the addition of a suitable lamp housing, it could be converted into a projector to show the images it had taken.

But with no such accessory available to them, Will had made do with a carnival hand’s ingenuity. He had exposed the half-width camera negative onto normal-sized film stock to produce an oddly proportioned, but viewable, positive image. At least, this was how he told it to Sebastian. Who still failed to understand until he saw the first, running-up-to-speed, flickering image on the big screen.

One entire side of the screen was blank while on the other, two near-identical images appeared. One above, one below—until Will put his hand before the projecting lens in a crude mask, leaving just one bright image in a quarter of the screen.

It was a garden scene.

“Are those the girls?” Sedgewick said.

“I believe they are,” Sebastian said.

He could not easily relate the figures on the screen to the bodies that he’d seen the night before. Though made of nothing but light, these girls were life itself. Whereas those bodies, though flesh and blood, had borne the full weight of death.

Now here they were, in summer dresses and grown-ups’ hats, with a backdrop of lawn and rhododendron. One bright girl, one dark one. Their antics would never change. Nor would they age.

Nothing really happened. The girls were doing the kinds of things that people do when someone points a camera at them for no special reason. Just standing there in the garden, hesitant, smiling, uncertain.

Sebastian was disappointed. These scenes had been made earlier in the summer, probably by Florence’s father. They told nothing of the night the girls had died.

Then the scene changed. Though the film continued, the screen went dim.

Sedgewick turned to the open door of the projection booth and called out to Will, “What’s the neg like?”

“Very thin,” Will replied.

Satisfied, Sedgewick returned his attention to the screen.

Something was happening there. It was hard to make out what. Something seemed to move in the shadows, and then to rush toward the camera.

“My God!” one of the sideshow workers said.

The rest of the film was blank after that.

AROUND THE same time, back in her old bedroom, Evangeline May Bancroft sat on her bed with the curtains thrown back, looking at the moon across the rooftops. The moonlight caused roof slates to shine like polished iron.

She had made it home with nothing to spare. When she’d climbed off the bicycle to walk it back into the shed, her legs had been unsteady. Through the anxiety or the exertion, it was impossible to say.

After her conversation with Grace, the hunger to know was fiercer than ever. Something had once happened to her. Something had shaped her, but she couldn’t say what. However awful, she needed to understand it. If she knew herself better, her life might be different.

This had been Evangeline’s first return to Arnmouth in some time. A year, at least, since her cousin’s wedding, where the local women had gathered at the church gate for a sight of the bride. She wrote to her mother every week, and received a letter in return, so she was reasonably au courant with local affairs—who’d left, who’d died, which of her contemporaries was now married and to whom. For her part, she wrote of exhibitions and concerts that she’d attended, of anything interesting that happened in her work, and the seesawing health of her landlady’s cat, which was a fighter.

One time, when Lydia had written at unusual length about cousins and weddings and children, she’d responded, Few men in London seem to care for a provincial girl with strong opinions about life. I rather fear, Mother, that you may have to resign yourself to having raised an old maid.

She hadn’t been entirely honest in writing it. She’d had no lack of suitors in London, despite her making no efforts to invite them. They appeared, they persisted for a while, and then eventually they gave up and looked elsewhere. She did nothing to drive them away. She actually preferred the company of men to women. But she did nothing to encourage them beyond a certain point.

In Evangeline, the prospect of intimacy raised complex emotions. Intimacy was like a ship to her. A picturesque thing on the horizon, but intimidating when it loomed overhead.

She’d indicated to her mother that a life alone—much like Lydia’s own, in fact—was more appealing to her than any alternative.

And in that, she supposed that she’d lied.