Hide Me Among the Graves

Page 13

 

  For the moment he simply shied away from thinking about the woman who had been with Trelawny, the woman who had seemed to stop his identity, crush it; to remember the encounter might be to reexperience it.

  And the old woman Carpace had died there, and he had caused her death - he could simply have knocked both glasses off the table, couldn't he? But that hadn't even occurred to him at the time. Even so, he might have supposed it was opium or some similar drug that would only have made the drinker lose consciousness . . . but in fact, to the extent that he had thought of it at all, he knew he had assumed that one of the glasses had been primed with a lethal poison.

  It was to save McKee . . . but he could have broken the glasses. Instead, he had switched them.

  Sweat on his face and in his hair made the headwind even more sharply chilling, but he welcomed the immediacy of it.

  Apoplectic fit, heart attack, those were plausible - no one had seen him switch the glasses. And even if someone had, what business did Carpace have putting poison in a wine glass? And mightn't Crawford simply have a habit of idly moving objects around. . . ?

  Hidden away under layers of cloth, his heart was shaking inside his ribs.

  The woman with Trelawny had been like the moon falling out of the sky onto him -

  He took a deep breath and held it, and when he exhaled, he told himself that the evening's scenes were falling away behind him with the steam of his breath.

  The cab bounced across an intersection that he believed was High Holborn. He was just one anonymous Londoner among - what? a million? - in the foggy night.

  He tried to imagine that his part in this entirely calamitous business was at an end. McKee had needed his help to get into that ill-starred salon - fair enough, and she had got it! - and now she could pursue her dubious quest alone.

  He shifted uncomfortably on the damp leather seat at the memory of having found McKee attractive.

  But her daughter - his daughter - was alive; according to that old dead bawd, at least.

  I might have a living child, he told himself, cautiously tasting that thought.

  Abruptly he remembered that Old Mr. Figgins was the name of his client's dog, and his face burned now as he remembered saying that he and Figgins must get together for dinner. Did his client imagine that Crawford intended to have the dog sit at the table, or that Crawford proposed to crouch on the floor and share the dog's dinner? Tomorrow he must send a note -

  But the shallow evasive thought fell apart, leaving him with the weighty knowledge that he had a daughter, somewhere. She would be . . . six or seven years old now.

  When the cab drew up in front of his house in the narrow lane that was Wych Street, Crawford had paid the cabbie and started up his steps before he noticed McKee leaning in the recessed doorway, out of the wind.

  Thinking of overlapping auras, he quickly unlocked the door and led her into the parlor and turned up the gas jet. Cats, a few of them missing limbs, looked up incuriously from the couch.

  "Shall I take your coat?" he asked neutrally, unbuttoning his own. His fingers were still trembling.

  But McKee just laid her purse on the table by the couch and pulled the tiny cage out; she peered at the little bird for a moment, then set it down.

  "I hope he shook all of this morning's salt out of his tail," she said. "With any luck, he did catch that old woman. "

  The old woman I killed, Crawford thought; and he threw his coat onto a chair and crossed to the mantel. The fire had gone out, and the room was chilly.

  "Will it - save her from Hell?" he asked as he poured himself a glass of whisky. He looked from his glass to McKee. "Would you like . . . some tea?"

  "No. And no, thank you. We have to be going. No, the bird might have caught her ghost, but her ghost isn't her. "

  "Going? No, Miss McKee, I've - "

  "You and I need to see a man. " She was pacing the carpet by the table.

  Crawford shook his head in bewilderment. "Who, that Vindaloo fellow that Trelawny mentioned? Fricassee? Look what time it is - he'll be asleep. "

  McKee frowned and halted. "Trelawny? That old bearded man was Edward John Trelawny?"

  "Apparently. "

  "I think you saw the - the woman he was with. "

  Crawford cleared his throat and nodded, and he took a gulp of the whisky before he dared to speak. "Good thing you were quick with your garlic," he said finally, trying to put a light tone in his voice. "I" - he forced an awkward laugh - "almost tipped over and fell into her eyes. "

  "It would have been a long fall. And it's a good thing you were quick at switching glasses - I owe you my life, I believe. " She blinked at him, then looked away and went on, "But Trelawny didn't . . . oppose us. "

  "No," said Crawford. He rubbed his free hand over his face. "In fact, before I left, he showed me the empty palms of his hands and made me show him mine. A . . . truce gesture?"

  McKee shook her head. "He was establishing that neither of you is a member of the Carbonari. They all have a black brand on one palm. And it's Chichuwee, not Vindaloo. " She canted her head and looked at him through narrowed eyes. "We need to go see him now, to save our daughter. "

  For several seconds neither of them spoke; the only sound was throaty mumbling from the bird. Finally, "We'll go in the morning," Crawford said. "You and I can't travel under a - a naked sky at night, correct?"

  "It will be mainly . . . indoors. And she's alive! Put your coat back on. "

  Crawford tried to yell very quietly as he looked around the room and thought of his bed and the oblivion of sleep waiting for him upstairs.

  His wife and younger son were dead, and Girard was . . . something like and unlike dead.

  But this Johanna was, apparently, still alive.

  He drained the whisky and, with huge reluctance, picked up his coat.

  MCKEE WHISPERED, "YOU KNOW the Spotted Dog, on the next street?"

  She and Crawford were standing in the recessed doorway of his house with the closed door at their backs. The night air was colder than ever, and her little birdcage was wrapped in a cloth in her handbag.

  Crawford was hugging his coat around himself and shivering. "Of course. "

  "Meet me there. I'll walk west, around the old Inn of Chancery, and you go east, as we did this morning. " He saw a quick smile on her face in the shadows, and she softly sang a couple of lines from a popular song: "'Meet me by moonlight alone, / And then I will tell you a tale. '"

  And something-something at the end of the vale, thought Crawford, remembering the vapid lyrics. And was it, he thought forlornly, only this morning that this woman and I walked down to the Strand and got in an old hackney cab with that clerk? And the day's not done yet.

  She had tapped down the steps and was hurrying away to his right, quickly disappearing in the shadows of the old overhanging houses that were now mostly used-clothing shops.

  Crawford touched the lump under his coat that was the little bottle of crushed garlic, then sighed and descended the steps and set off to the east.

  This end of the street was brighter, for the windows of the Angel public house glowed amber in the fog ahead of him, and, when he had rounded both corners of the place, he could see the blurry lights of the bookshops that had driven the old-clothes business into the next street - though the gigantic masks over the vacated costume warehouse still grimaced down from the murky shadows overhead as he passed by.

  The Spotted Dog was at the far end of Holywell Street, almost to Newcastle Street, and Crawford, his gloved hands deep in his overcoat pockets, peered in at the shop windows he passed. Three-volume novels, newspapers, pamphlets denouncing Darwin . . . he wondered if the young authoress of the Lunar Encomium was represented by any published books. On the whole, he hoped not.

  CHAPTER SIX

  "Nay now, of the dead what can you say,

  Little brother?"

  (O Mother,
Mary Mother,

  What of the dead, between Hell and Heaven?)

  - Dante Gabriel Rossetti, "Sister Helen"

  MCKEE HAD ARRIVED at their rendezvous before he did and pulled the door open for him.

  "We'll have to buy two tickets," she said, "even though we're only going downstairs. " She had four pennies in her hand, and she pushed the big brown coins across the counter of a little window set into the wooden wall of the entry hall; and a moment later she turned and handed Crawford a dented tin card, keeping another in her gloved hand.

  She gestured toward the open doorway beyond the counter, and Crawford shrugged and stepped through into what proved to be a vast kitchen lit by gas jets between the beams of the ceiling, with at least twenty people standing around on the flagstone floor or sitting on a bench that ran like a continuous shelf around the whole room. A big black iron stove stood in a far corner, and something was cooking that involved bacon and onions. Some people were lining up with plates.

  Crawford looked hopefully at McKee, but she shook her head. "Downstairs," she said, nodding toward a doorway in the back wall, which was papered with posters announcing various music-hall performers.

  Crawford followed her across the room, promising himself a good supper when he got back home.

  A couple of the men on the bench called, "Addie!" and another said, "Back in trade, girl?"

  "Don't you just wish, Joey," she said to him, not pausing.

  Beyond the doorway was a dark hall and a flight of wooden stairs leading down. A cold draft welled up from below, smelling of wet clay and wood smoke.

  McKee paused at the top of the stairs to shed her coat and bonnet and hang them on a couple of hooks in the wall. "Leave your hat and coat here," she said. "And take off your gloves. You'll want to be able to feel the walls. "

  Crawford sighed and carefully hung his coat and hat on another hook and stuffed the gloves in his trousers pocket.

  The stairs were unlit, and as McKee and Crawford descended below the level of the floor, he held the banister rail and felt for each step with his boot.

  He was holding the little tin card in his left hand. "Will we need to show these to anybody?" he whispered. "The tickets. "

  "Those are for bed check," came her voice from the darkness below him. "We're not going to be sleeping here. "

  "No," he agreed, tucking the thing in his pocket on top of his gloves. He peered uselessly upward, wondering what sort of beds the Spotted Dog offered. "Shouldn't we have brought lanterns?"

  "It's considered arrogant. There'll be light after a while, farther down. "

  Considered arrogant by whom? he wondered. "Shouldn't we be talking in whispers?"

  "Not yet. This is still the Spotted Dog basement, really. "

  The banister ended in a splintery stump, and as they descended farther he had to press his right palm against rough bricks.

  Crawford cleared his throat and spoke a little more loudly. "You've been here before?"

  "A couple of times. But there are ways down all over the City. "

  "Are we . . . going into the sewers?" Crawford had heard stories about feral rats and pigs that lived in the London sewers. "What I mean to say is - I'm not going into the sewers. " Her definition of downstairs was proving to be more far-reaching than he had expected.

  "Old sewers," she said in what was apparently meant to be a reassuring tone. "Ones that have been cut out of the system by newer ones. Just damp tunnels now, except when it rains. Right below us was a regular Phlegethon a couple of years ago, but the new interceptory Piccadilly Branch drained it. "

  "Phlegethon," said Crawford, largely to gauge the volume of the unseen space they were in by the way his voice rang in the dark. "Plato's flaming river to the underworld, in Phaedrus. You're well-read. "

  "This one caught fire too, sometimes. Oil and decaying ghosts on the water igniting - smoke coming up out of street gratings - you probably noticed it. I've always been one for having the nose in a book, and at Carpace's there was plenty of spare time for reading. " He heard her pause below him. "Steps ending here, flat floor for a while. Not level, but flat. "

  "I," said Crawford carefully, "killed her. Carpace. "

  The sound of her steps changed from clumping on wood to tapping on stone, and he stepped carefully down onto the sloping floor.

  "If you had not," McKee said, "she would have killed me. " He heard her sigh. "I suppose I parade it, sometimes. Quoting things. So people at least won't assume I'm a typical ex-whore and Hail Mary dealer. "

  So much for Carpace, Crawford thought. "Not just one more of that lot," he agreed, and she laughed quietly.

  "Your holy well is up ahead," she said. "Roman stonework, I'm told. It was probably on the surface once, along with a lot else - London keeps shifting underground. One day people will - " Her footsteps stopped. "Yes, here it is. One day people will have to go down into tunnels to see St. Paul's. "

  Crawford could see . . . not a glow, but a lessening in the darkness ahead; and after a few more steps, his outstretched palms collided with a waist-high stone coping. The smoky smell seemed to be rising from beyond it, and now it bore a faint salt-and-rot tang of the river.

  Then McKee startled him by saying, loudly, "Origo lemurum. "

  He jumped again when McKee's hand touched his face - she brought her head close to his and breathed in his ear, "Whispers from here on, I think. And not loquacious. Feel over the rim - there's rungs, leading down. "

  He let her carry his hand over the rim of the well and press it against the stones of the curved inner wall, and his fingers brushed an iron bracket.

  Downstairs! he thought. "Is this the only way?" he whispered desperately.