Will Thomas: The Hellfire Conspiracy

Barker’s head had been bathed by another Salvation Army officer. Fitzhugh took over for her, applying sticking plaster to the major lesions and painting the rest of my employer’s face in iodine. I was glad for once that he always wore dark spectacles, else he might have been blinded. By the time the doctor had finished tending him, the iodine and plaster made him look worse than before he had been treated.

“Bloody hell,” a man said behind us. I looked over my shoulder into the eyes of Inspector Swanson. “Why aren’t these men locked up, as I ordered?”

“I discarded your suggestion,” Dunham said, emphasizing the final word, “and decided to go after the killer of all those girls I found in the river. His name is Stephen Carrick and he’s here in my custody.”

“In case you didn’t notice, Dunham, you ain’t on the river now. This is Yard business.”

“I came here on the river,” the Thames Police inspector maintained. “I found those girls in the first place and I wrote the reports you stole and never returned. I won’t have you giving me orders. Why don’t you go back to Whitehall where you belong?”

While the inspectors continued their jurisdictional argument, I hefted my employer to his feet, and the two of us shuffled through the alleyways to the warehouse. Once inside, I called for Mac and together, we got the Guv upstairs and onto the mattress. I believe he fell asleep almost instantly.

“Oy, Thomas,” Mac said, using my Christian name for the first time that I could recall. “You are a fright.”

I looked down at myself. My oilskin was in tatters and there was a large hole burned through my jacket and waistcoat to my shirt beneath. There were blisters on my hand. I went in search of my shaving mirror, and when I found it, wished I hadn’t. My nose and forehead were red from the fireball and my face black with soot. My hair had been singed by fire and would have to be cut short to look normal.

I suddenly began to shake as it all caught up with me, but I fought back the attack of nerves. I had made a temporary truce with Mac but didn’t want to show any sign of weakness. “I say,” I said in my most casual voice, “any chance for a cup of coffee?”

“Of course, but I think first I must attend to your wounds. I’ve got a medical kit among my things.”

“Is there anything you neglected to bring?” I dared ask.

“Shoe polish,” he responded, taking my remark literally. “I have had to buff my shoes with a cloth. I shall remember it the next time the Guv decides to move us into temporary quarters.”

“I hope that won’t be for a very long while.”

“I do, as well,” Mac said. “To be quite candid, I’ve hated it here. I do not believe I would have made a good Sicilian.”

Mac pulled a box full of gauze and other medical supplies from one of his trunks and set to work. I flinched as he applied iodine to one of my burns.

“So,” Mac said as he painted my face. “I assume you got Miacca.”

“Bagged him but good,” I answered. “He’s in police custody, though I’m not certain which police.”

“So, tell me who it was and what happened.”

I told him everything from the time Barker first put the punting pole into the water until we had staggered into the warehouse still smoldering. It took almost half an hour of explaining. We had had an eventful evening.

“So it was Carrick,” Mac said. “How long do you suppose the Guv had known?”

“I have no idea,” I said, looking at the slumbering figure on the bed. “The important thing is it’s done. Miacca is in custody, Bethnal Green is safe, and we can go back to Newington again. No more stony mattresses.”

“No more eight-hour vigils.”

“No more meals served at room temperature.”

“Fresh sheets, clean laundry, fresh cream on the doorstep every morning.”

“And best of all, no infernal exercises.”

“Do you gentlemen intend to talk all night?” Barker spoke from the bed. “Be so good as to give me twenty-five of your best.”

Thenext day we moved out of Bethnal Green. I was very happy to return the key to the estate agents and be shed of it. In Newington, we put our injured employer to bed and called in his personal physician, Dr. Applegate. He had to cut Barker out of his clothing. Some of the fabric that adhered to his burned skin had to be slowly removed with salad oil. The physician trussed him up like an Egyptian mummy. When he offered to treat me as well, I politely refused.

Afterward, Barker had me summon a barber to his bed. I had to keep raising my offered fee for the man’s services until he stopped grumbling and we reached a settlement. He came and cut all our hair, Mac’s included, clucking over the state of our appearance, as if acid throwing were some new fashion of which he disapproved, but he left having more than made up for the time he’d shut down his shop.

Barker was awake in the center of his old cabinet bed, with the curtains all drawn back. He was not the most handsome of men, but I hoped for his sake he would heal quickly.

“Sir,” I said. “Mac and I were wondering when you first suspected Carrick.”

“The second I saw him,” he replied.

My brows went up.

“Don’t think me a genius, yet, lad. I thought the same thing about Dr. Fitzhugh and William Stead. Detection is not about finding someone and fashioning a charge that will stick to him. It’s more like a footrace. One knows the winner is among the runners, but only when the others have dropped out and the race is finished will you know who it is. In this case, I began with a couple of assumptions.

“My first was that Miacca was mad. He worked from a compulsion to kill young girls, but his madness was not patently obvious or he would have been arrested by Scotland Yard immediately. They are not simpletons, and they have great resources. Dunham is a good man, but Swanson is a first-rate detective. It was a challenge to work against him in this case.

“My second assumption was that Miacca was educated, for only an educated person would quote Blake or parrot your Mr. Lear. The problem was that so many of our suspects were well educated. Carrick, Miss Levy, Dr. Fitzhugh, William Stead, Mr. Clay, Lord Hesketh, and Dashwood had seen time at university. My assumption has been proven false. I now believe that Rose Carrick worked in collaboration with her husband in writing the taunting notes. She’s the one who chose the victims.”

“Now wait,” I said. “Are you claiming Rose Carrick helped her husband? That implies that she knew what he was and what he did.”

“More than that, it implies that she did not care. Her own husband assaulted and murdered children, and she helped him do so. I believe it was her task to get rid of the bodies when he was done with them. He would not have cared what became of the corpses. She was the organized one, the planner sitting in the British Museum, cribbing poems to use in taunting letters. She was his helpmeet and protector. She would have done anything for him, suffered anything. In fact, she did.”

“But why?” I asked. “Who would put up with that?”

“Do you recall how Stephen Carrick ran into trouble at university and ended up losing his inheritance?”

“Yes, he was consorting with a fallen woman.”

“That fallen woman, I believe, was Rose Carrick. Her life had reached the point where she was living as a prostitute in Oxford. The senior Carrick found that they had taken up together and demanded he give her up. Carrick refused, not because he was in love with her but because he would not be dictated to by his father. Rose may have interpreted it as such, and no doubt, she persuaded herself she was in love. She molded her life around him and defended him fully. In her mind, she had somehow won the prize, the handsomest, most intelligent, wealthy gentleman she’d ever met. By the time she discovered that he was less than perfect, that in fact, he was a monster, it was too late. She had committed herself and would do so unto death. She loved him fully, while he, in turn, was incapable of love but knew a good thing when he saw it. I believe she even selected candidates for his abductions. It is perhaps the reason she volunteered at the Charity Organization Society in the first place.”