James Blaylock - The Aylesford Skull

“Hello yourself,” Finn said. “Do you know Jermyn Street?”

“Jermyn Street? Oh, aye. The length of it. There’s Dunhill, where they sell the pipe tobacco, and Tarkenton’s along past it, and…”

“I’m thinking about the far end. Near Green Park. Queen’s Walk side.”

“Oh, aye. There’s…”

“A toymaker named Keeble has a shop there. I’ll lay odds that you’ve looked into the window more than once.”

A lamp switched on behind Newman’s eyes. He nodded happily.

“There’s a door just beyond that shop, at the far corner, the little cut-off piece of Jermyn, with a sign that says ‘Scout’s Rest.’ Can you read?”

“Oh, aye. Somewhat, leastways.”

“Look for the sign, then, right there on the corner, set into the bricks. Bang the knocker next to the sign. Hard, mind you. Wake the house. There’s a speaking tube alongside. When they answer, tell them that you’ve a message for Jack Owlesby, or Mrs. Owlesby, if she’s in and he ain’t.”

“A message is it?” Newman asked, looking at him shrewdly now.

“You’ll hear them through the speaking tube, just as clear as if they stood before you. Tell them, ‘Finn Conrad says it’s Egypt Bay, in the marsh.’ Can you do that, say into the tube? Tell them that’s where the Doctor’s bound if he’s bolted.”

“Egypt Bay if the Doctor’s bolted. In the marsh. Jack or the missus. Message from Finn Conrad to be shouted into the tube.”

“That’s it in a nut. Tell them Finn’s gone on ahead as best he can. Can you go there now, to Jermyn Street? It’s late, but… Here.” Finn looked around hastily and, seeing no one evidently watching, he removed his toeless right shoe and took half a crown out of it before slipping the shoe back on. He pressed the coin into Newman’s palm and closed his fingers around it. “Will you help me?” he asked.

Newman opened his hand and stared at the coin, then pocketed it. He nodded briskly.

“Don’t tell anyone, not even old Lazarus,” Finn started to say, but he said it to Newman’s back, for the boy was already running, away up Angel Alley where he shortly disappeared from view. Finn followed him at a brisk pace, but by the time he got to Wentworth Street Newman had quite disappeared. To Finn’s surprise, however, the Crumpet and the dwarf were still there, across the street now, communicating with someone inside a carriage – a five-glass landau, black and gold paint, very swank, luggage strapped onto the back atop a capacious rack, headlights shining into the night. The two horses stamped impatiently while the driver, an ugly, wrinkled gnome-like man in an ancient, enormously tall beaver top hat, waited on his seat beneath a gas lamp on a post. His boots, Finn saw, had two-inch-thick soles. He tapped his fingers against his knees as if keeping time to music that only he could hear.

Finn walked forward, as if to pass in front of the carriage, trying to get a look at the passenger. It was dim within the interior, but the silhouette of the hunchbacked man was clearly visible – Narbondo himself. The top of Eddie’s head was just visible on the seat opposite. Finn studied the luggage rack, which was placed low to the ground on a sort of flying bridge at the level of the axels. There was ten inches or so between the narrow, strapped-down trunk and the back wall of the carriage.

The driver whipped up the horses now, and the coach moved away, the Crumpet and the dwarf setting out again. Finn took a running start, following the carriage as it gained speed, rocking on the rough pavement. As long as he kept tight to the rear corner, he would be out of sight of the driver. He ran faster, a measured distance from the moving vehicle. The two in the coach looked ahead. Abruptly he threw himself sideways and forward, pulling himself along the top of the trunk while pressing himself downward like a limpet, hanging tight to the straps to stop himself from falling off when the carriage took a sudden lurch. He pushed himself backward now, sliding down between the trunk and the stern of the carriage like a plate settling into a rack on the wall, sandwiched in tight and safe as a baby, although tolerably cramped, and with his nosed pressed to the trunk. There was no hint of the landau slowing down, however, no calling out from people who might have seen him fling himself aboard, and soon they rounded onto a broad, smoothly metaled street, Finn safely hidden away.

After a time, he lifted himself carefully and craned his neck to see into the coach. He found himself looking past the back of Narbondo’s head, and was surprised to see Eddie staring straight back at him. He put his finger to the side of his nose and the boy looked away. Finn settled down again, laid his head on his arm, and closed his eyes. He had long had the habit of falling asleep at will under rough circumstances, and that’s what he did now, the coach jogging along through the midnight streets, bound for Egypt Bay.

“Not much of a butcher’s bill if you ask me,” Tubby said, picking up a rasher of bacon from a platter in the middle of the table and folding it into his mouth. “Two of the villains dead, and four others off their feed for a month. Why thank you, Winnifred,” he said to Mrs. Keeble, who set a plate of fried eggs and beans in front of him. “This is kindness personified.”

William, Winnifred Keeble’s inventor husband, snored in an upholstered chair, apparently indifferent to the promise of food. He was an early riser, up with the dawn, and was happily asleep by eight o’clock in the evening, which is to say, some four hours ago. Winnifred had driven him out of bed and compelled him to put on a dressing gown in deference to their late-arriving guests, but the effort hadn’t really awakened him. Hasbro came out from the kitchen now with a steaming platter of chops and another of black pudding, followed by Jack Owlesby and his wife Dorothy, carrying pots of coffee and more plates of food.

“Vittles is up!” Tubby said, looking hard at his companions, who were still seated around the room.

St. Ives found it incredible that Tubby was unscathed. Given his reckless abandon in the melee he might have been murdered three times over. And a melee it had been, a wild brawl that had achieved considerably less than nothing. Doyle had pronounced St. Ives fit after sewing up a flap of scalp that had been laid open, but any of the blows that he had taken on the head might have knocked him permanently senseless. The aching in his forehead, although easing up some, was still a distraction, and he studiously kept his head very still. He thought of Alice and of her threat to beat him with a coal shovel – no need for that now, really. He wondered what she was doing, whether she was asleep or lying abed worrying. He pictured her in his mind, and his heart was filled with sadness at his failure. “Christ, that my love were in my arms and I in my bed again , ” he thought, remembering the old poem that had affected him so strongly when he was a younger man. He was surprised that its effect was squared and cubed now that he was older and had lived some. It hadn’t been but a day since he and Alice had parted, although it seemed like an eternity.

He thought about how full of optimism he had allowed himself to be just a few hours ago at the Half Toad, when they were at the beginning of things. That was too often the way of it – the fate of hopeful plans: inspired anticipation ending in unhappy regret. Certainly Narbondo had anticipated their arrival this evening and so had easily escaped, just as St. Ives had feared would happen. There was no point at all in returning to Thrawl Street in the morning on the pretense of carrying ransom money. They had been soundly beaten, no matter how many of the enemy they had brought down. That was the long and the short of it. The precious information they’d got from Slocumb about Narbondo’s whereabouts was now yesterday’s news, useful for wrapping up fried cod. They had come to a dead end.