James Blaylock - The Aylesford Skull

Silence fell and then there was the sound of a door closing – Tubby stepping outside onto the bridge landing so as not to be seen – and then, very shortly, footfalls on the stairs. De Groot, if he was indeed the man who had purchased the miniature lamp from William Keeble, strode into the room, saw Doyle and Jack looking back at him, and at once drew a small pistol from beneath his coat. He was indeed a heavy-bodied man, dressed in a sack coat and with a deerstalker cap perched on his round head. He wore side-whiskers but no mustache, and had a tiny, pointed beard at his chin. His hair was theatrically red.

“I’ll relieve you of the ring you’re clutching, sir,” he said, looking at Jack’s closed fist. “Immediately, or I’ll have you taken up for trespass and theft. There are four soldiers waiting in the road. Come, what business do you have here?”

“By God I own this building, sir,” Jack lied. “Who in the devil are you?”

“The man who has come to collect a signet ring that does not belong to you.”

“Then to whom does it belong? There’s been considerable deviltry here, and I’d like to have a word with any witnesses.”

“It gives me great pleasure to tell you to mind your own business,” de Groot said. “You lie copiously. Give me the ring immediately, or I’ll summon my men.”

Tubby walked silently in behind de Groot at this juncture and hammered him on the back of the head with the cudgel. Jack moved forward and caught the falling pistol nimbly, pocketed both the pistol and the ring, and then stepped back out of the way as de Groot slowly collapsed onto his side in a heap.

“What about the horsemen?” Doyle asked.

“Still waiting patiently, God bless them,” Tubby said, “although their patience no doubt has its limits.” He bent over and wrenched off de Groot’s coat, the man’s limp arms swinging upward and then flapping to the ground again. He moaned and turned onto his back, his eyes shut, breathing heavily. Doyle pulled one eye open with his thumb, exposing the white of the rolled-back eyeball. Tubby searched the coat pockets, drawing out a purse and a sheaf of papers bound up in ribbon before flinging the coat into the corner of the room. “What are we looking for?” he asked.

“We don’t know,” Jack said. “Bring the lot.” Doyle stepped past them into the front room in order to take another look out of the window.

“We’ll take his purse into the bargain,” Tubby said to Jack. “I rather fancy the coat, too, but it’s an ironclad rule of mine that I don’t dress in my victim’s clothing.”

“One of the soldiers is climbing down from his horse,” Doyle said to them. “He’s pointing this way, having a word with the others. We’d best be off.”

“Hell and damnation,” Tubby said. “No time to drop our man headfirst into the courtyard?”

But de Groot was moaning where he lay and shuffling his feet, and Jack and Doyle were already heading toward the door that led out onto the bridge. Tubby followed, the three of them making their awkward way, high above the courtyard, the boards beneath their feet bobbing and swaying. Tubby lifted his hat to a young woman walking below, and then the three of them went through the open door and into the shadows, where they stopped for a moment to look back. There was movement through the broken window of the penthouse, and the sound of someone calling out tentatively – the soldier quite possibly, not wanting to offend de Groot, perhaps, by bursting in unannounced.

Doyle led the way downward and out into the alley again, the three of them moving away to the west as hurriedly as they could without calling attention to themselves, out onto Whitechapel Road and away toward Smithfield.

“Lord Moorgate, certainly,” Jack said, shuffling through the papers. “Mr. de Groot seems to be privy to the man’s most particular business. But what the devil is Moorgate up to?”

“Skullduggery, I don’t doubt,” Tubby said. “I have nothing but respect for your typical politico, and very damned little of that. I wish Doyle would work his magic on that cipher. I’m clemmed. I could eat a cow. We’d best be on our way as soon as he translates it, and so I’m leery of waiting breakfast on the man. We might all go hungry, which would be criminal.”

As if in answer, Henry Billson came out of the kitchen carrying a plate on which sat a stuffed pastry shaped like a circular Greek temple, with columns around the outside and a fleur-de-lis atop. It was baked to a golden brown, and the steam smelled of goose liver and bacon. Billson set it atop the table in front of Jack and Tubby and dusted his hands.

“Strasburg pie,” he said, “and kickshaws just finishing in the oven – Welsh rabbit, curry tarts, and, as another remove, a plate of cold oysters that Henrietta brought back from Billingsgate just this instant. I figured that you gentlemen might be peckish, but perhaps I should wait on the kickshaws until Mr. Doyle returns, if I can keep ’em hot.”

“God bless you, William,” Tubby said, “but Mr. Doyle might be hours yet. And he’d sooner starve than abandon his work. Bring out the lot of it, along with a spoon, if you will, so that Mr. Doyle can scrape up the crumbs if he comes too late for the feast. And send poor Hopeful out with an ewer of the Half Toad’s best ale, if you would. We’ve got a long day ahead, and we need sustenance. We’re bound for the Cliffe Marshes to exterminate vermin.”

When Billson had gone off to the kitchen, Jack said, “What I read in the news about Lord Moorgate leads me to believe that he’s no good, but I don’t know quite why. He seems a pompous ass to me, prating on about other people’s faults as if he has none of his own, and with no apparent goal but to puff himself up at another’s expense. He despises Gladstone; that much is evident.”

“His brand of Whiggery can’t tolerate Gladstone’s concern for the Irish,” Tubby said. “I know him from White’s. He’s a bottomless pit of stinking lucre. He once wagered three-thousand pounds that Morris Whitby, the Drury Lane agent, would be sick at the stomach within a quarter of an hour. Said he could tell from the pallor of the man’s face and the look in his eye. Lord Bingham took the bet and lost it again before they’d sunk their first glass of champagne. Poor Whitby began to act the part of a cat puking up a hairball and then set in to spewing his guts. Disgusting business. Krakatoa ain’t in it. I heard from Wickham that Moorgate had dosed Whitby’s gin to set it up, although Moorgate denied it, all the time grinning like a devil. Whitby threatened to sue, but there was no evidence. I wouldn’t play cards with the likes of Moorgate, but then he wouldn’t play cards with the likes of me, I suppose. I can easily imagine him consorting with Narbondo, although it would be the end of his reputation if it were known.”

The ale appeared, nearly a gallon of it, and they breakfasted on the Strasburg pie and made inroads into the heap of oysters, which were indeed cold, Billson having the wonderful habit of layering the shells atop foundations of chipped ice.

“Perhaps we can set about destroying Moorgate’s reputation if there’s something damning in the cipher, which there must be, given that it’s signed ‘Guido Fox,’” Tubby said. “‘Guy Fawkes, ’twas his intent, to blow up the King and Parliament,’” he recited. “But they can’t be serious about blowing up the King, because there ain’t one.”

“Even if there were something to implicate Moorgate in de Groot’s papers, he would claim that the ‘Guido Fox’ signature was a mere lark. And in any event nothing means anything unless Moorgate is particularly identified in it, and if it’s evidently criminal.”

“The signature is too clever by half. The police love the clever ones, Jack. It’s the plain, stable sort of criminal who confounds them – the cheerful gent who lives in a cottage by day and turns into a murderer by night. Clearly this bunch has explosives on the mind, however – anarchy, perhaps, or this fabulous scheme of Narbondo’s to hobnob in Hell, if we can credit it.”