James Blaylock - The Aylesford Skull

“I’m sure I don’t know, ma’am. I woke up a moment ago and found myself locked into the scullery. Perhaps Finn…”

“Finn wouldn’t have locked you into the scullery, Mrs. Langley,” St. Ives said, a morbid fear rising in him. “I suggest that you two search the house. I’ll find Finn.” He realized that it was more a certainty than a fear, or the two together, feeding each other. Before he was out the door, however, there came a second pounding. He heard crying – almost certainly Cleo – in the coat closet. The key was in the lock, but was turned – no need for a chair to keep the door shut. He unlocked it and let her out. She dragged her blanket behind her, evidently fuddled with sleep. As soon as she saw her mother she burst into tears, trying to speak but without any success. Alice picked her up, comforting her, walking her back and forth until she was sensible. St. Ives watched, his heart pounding, praying that this was one of Eddie’s games, although the chair against the scullery door…

“Did your brother lock you in?” Alice asked.

Cleo shook her head. “The man came,” she said between sobs. “He took Eddie. He put me in the closet and I mustn’t make a sound or he would hurt Eddie.”

“When did the man come?” St. Ives asked. “Was it dark outside, Cleo?”

She nodded.

“And did you fall asleep in the closet after?” Alice asked her, and she nodded again.

Alice looked evenly at St. Ives. “ The man ,” she said flatly.

“I’ll just speak to Finn now,” St. Ives said, pushing through the gallery door and down the several stairs. How much had he told Alice about the skulls when he had recounted his conversation with Mother Laswell – surely not that they were commonly taken from children? He hoped fervently that he had left the details out. As he sprinted to Finn’s cottage the idea came to him that he would tell Alice to be on the lookout for a ransom demand: there was hope in a ransom, after all. Surely that’s what Narbondo intended… He knocked on Finn’s door, which opened immediately, Finn disheveled from sleep and holding a magazine open in his hand. “I was lying abed, sir, it being Saturday.”

“Good for you, Finn, but there’s trouble. Eddie’s been taken.”

“Taken, sir?”

“Kidnapped, I fear. Did you see anything odd early this morning? Hear anything? You haven’t seen Eddie up and about?”

Finn stared at him blankly, and, it seemed to St. Ives, turned pale. “No, sir. But last night, there was a man on the road. I didn’t think…”

“What did he look like? A dark-haired smallish man? With a hump on his back?”

“Yes, sir. That’s him. I was out looking at a deer that had got into the roses. I seen a corpse candle near the road, and walked down the wisteria alley, and there at the crossing your man sat in the wagon. He asked the way to the London Road, and so I told him.”

“A corpse candle do you say?”

“Yes, sir. A spirit light, hovering nearby the wagon. It was the ghost of a boy; I could see that much. I didn’t like the look on your man’s face, sir, but I can’t rightly tell you why. It was a thing you could smell almost. I can’t think of another way to put it. I made sure to stand in the shadows. He wanted me to get into the cart with him, but I wouldn’t, and he drove away.”

“I fear that he returned,” St. Ives said, “after you’d gone back up to your cottage. He drove away only because you’d seen him.”

“Who was he, sir?”

“His name is Ignacio Narbondo. If you see him again, Finn, don’t speak to him. Don’t go near him. Run. He’s the king of liars.”

“I’ve heard you speak of this Narbondo, sir. And Jack Owlesby told me about him when I stayed at the house on Jermyn Street. Narbondo was the one as caused the trouble at Morecambe Bay.”

“Yes,” said St. Ives. “The very man, come round again.”

Finn stood staring for a moment, his hand at his forehead. “I should have come looking for you, sir, or Mrs. St. Ives. I knew it was long odds against anyone coming along to tell him of the London Road that time of night, but I didn’t think… I didn’t… I should have come up to the house.”

“You couldn’t have known, Finn. I knew that Narbondo had been lurking roundabout, and I neglected to tell you . The blame in that regard is my own.”

Finn was staring at St. Ives’s feet now, his face set. He touched his forehead again with trembling fingers, as if he couldn’t keep his hands still. “I didn’t know…” he said, as if trying to come to grips with his regret.

“Finn,” St. Ives told him. “The guilt of the crime lies solely with Narbondo, and what’s left over I’ll take. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” Finn said, nodding his head too rapidly to be convincing.

“Good man,” St. Ives said. “See to things, Finn, while I’m gone. I’ll be traveling in to London again.”

A wagon came rattling along the wisteria alley now – Hasbro come home, and none too soon. St. Ives pressed Finn’s shoulder and turned away, running toward Hasbro, who reined up the horses.

“We leave for London in half an hour,” St. Ives said without preamble. “Narbondo has taken Eddie.”

Alice watched as the wagon moved away, dust rising from the wheels, carrying her husband from her yet again, his portmanteau sitting on the bed of the cart. He turned and waved one last time before the wagon flung itself up onto the road and flew out of sight, but she knew that his mind was already on London, and on the terrible need to make haste yet again. The last thing she said to him was, “Bring me his head.” But she knew now that it was her very anger at Narbondo that instigated vicious thoughts within her – anger at the hold that he had upon all of them, and especially upon her husband.

He can save others, she thought, watching the dust settle, but he cannot save himself, the utterance of the Corinthian soldier coming into her mind unbidden.

Bitter thoughts followed – recriminations that she wished weren’t there, that had been drawn from within her as out of a dark well. She cast them aside and thought of her own part in the crime. Better to be angry with herself. Why hadn’t she awakened? Wasn’t she supposed to have some instinctive bond with her children, whom she’d foolishly allowed to sleep alone in the gallery? Why that , of all things, when the devil was abroad in the neighborhood?

“Gone again,” she said out loud, pushing the unanswerable questions aside and talking now to the empty afternoon.

What if, she wondered – what if years ago, Langdon had taken a different turning in the road, and Narbondo and he had never been put into each other’s way? What then? Would some other tragedy or woe have stepped into the breach? It was apparently what the human multitudes were born for. That she might or might not have awakened in the night made little difference now. It was foolish to lament what had not happened any more than to worry about what might. There were a million possible alternatives that arose in a lifetime, and it had quite simply fallen out by dumb chance that she now had both a husband and a son to lose in a single stroke.

She found a kerchief in her pocket and wiped the tears from her cheeks. She knew absolutely that unless she forced herself to remain even, with her wits intact, she would begin to sob, and that the sobbing would not answer, but would shatter what little command she had left of herself, and she would be no good to anyone. Though come to that, what good was she now?

Her mind turned to Finn, and she looked toward his cottage, where for some reason the door stood half open. Langdon had told her that Finn blamed himself for Eddie’s kidnapping, and would certainly torture himself with it. And so the poison spreads , she thought. At that moment a gust of wind banged the door fully open. It swung back again, but didn’t shut, and it came to her that the cottage was empty.