James Blaylock - The Aylesford Skull

From the old boathouse hidden in the trees a quarter mile away, there was a clear view of the path along the edge of the bay, which was nothing more than the low tide line, dried out in the sun. It was shrinking, however, with the incoming tide. Through his telescope, Narbondo watched the five men moving along the water’s edge. The vile boy was alive, which meant that the Crumpet hadn’t caught him, despite his spirited chase along the shore not thirty minutes past. The single gunshot that had sounded had quite possibly ended the Crumpet’s career in mid-stride, which was not entirely an unfortunate thing, from Narbondo’s point of view, since the Crumpet’s depredations had begun to lead the man into stupidities. He had been amusing in his time, but if his time had passed, then so be it.

Narbondo saw that the fat man was armed. St. Ives and his factotum would no doubt possess the pistols that they had had with them last night. They were meddlesome men, and dangerous; he would give them that. He had underestimated St. Ives before, but this time St. Ives had underestimated Narbondo. It would be amusing to destroy St. Ives’s airship as a parting gesture; it was a pity that they hadn’t the time.

He nodded to McFee, who fired the boiler, and a short time later the very serviceable engine developed the pressure needed to propel the freshly painted launch out onto Egypt Bay. The casks of coal dust were lashed tightly together in the stern and covered with canvas, and the craft was full of men who would do what was asked of them if they were well paid. George, alas, had been a rare exception to the rule. If Narbondo was a man of sentiment, he might actually have had a fondness for George, but he had been exclusively fond of George’s many talents, which the man had thrown away due to that feebleness of the mind known as kindness.

The narrow inlet of the bay lay dead ahead, the tide surging through it. He looked back across the expanse of water toward the aptly named Shade House, where he saw smoke rising above the trees. Of course. St. Ives and his cronies had burned the place. It was a futile gesture, mere anger at having once again come too late to the fair. The launch crossed into the moving water of the Thames now, and the narrow mouth of Egypt Bay closed behind them.

It was St. Ives and Tubby who entered the cellar room through the trapdoor in the cottage floor, Tubby lighting the Argand lamp in order to brighten the dim room. St. Ives saw the body lying on the table, the open door into a tunnel at their left, another door, this one shut, at their right, a barred window beside it through which the wind blew, carrying on it the smell of pond water and heather.

“Good Christ,” Tubby said, looking at the man, who lay on his back on the table, strapped down with leather-covered chains across his chest and ankles, his dead eyes staring at the ceiling. His silk top hat sat behind his head.

The slit in his neck appeared to be a second gaping mouth, his chin and chest bathed in dried blood. His arms lay at his sides, although the hands had been severed at the wrists, and they gripped the chains that bound his chest. A calling card had been slid between two of the fingers. A prodigious quantity of blood had run out of his wrists as well as out of his throat. He had died there upon the table, St. Ives thought, his heart pumping out blood, although the wound in his neck had been delivered nearer to the door, where there was yet more blood on the stones of the floor. Someone had walked through it – a woman, clearly – who had gone out through the door. A bloody butcher’s cleaver was fixed in the tabletop. Everything in the room argued that Narbondo practiced human vivisection. No mere anatomist needed to bind down a corpse, and certainly Narbondo was no surgeon. The debt St. Ives owed Finn and Bill Kraken couldn’t be calculated.

Tubby plucked the calling card from the hand of the corpse and held it in the lamplight. “ Lord Moorgate ,” he read aloud. “What does this mean, do you suppose?”

“A falling out, perhaps. Or perhaps that Narbondo has once again found it profitable to alter his plans.”

St. Ives thought about this. Now that de Groot’s identity was certain, it was clear that Lord Moorgate had purchased the miniaturized lamp from William Keeble. Moorgate was the Customer that George had mentioned, or had been, and no doubt about it. There was no evidence that Eddie had met with violence here. If Narbondo had carried out his threats to harm Eddie in order to profit from Moorgate, he wouldn’t have scrupled to leave evidence of it for St. Ives to find. Indeed, it would give him great joy. Moorgate was dead and Eddie was not. Finn had saved Eddie’s life. St. Ives scarcely allowed himself to believe it, but it seemed possible that Bill Kraken had done his part to turn the tide, that everything had changed when Bill had appeared and Finn and Eddie escaped into the wood.

“We’re finished here,” he said to Tubby.

“Almost,” Tubby said, unscrewing the lid from the oil receptacle on top of the Argand lamp. He smelled it. “Whale oil, I believe,” he said. And with that he upended it, pouring it over the edges of the table and onto the floor. “There lies a second lamp,” he said, pointing at the Argand lamp that sat on the shelf above the glass boxes. “What do you make of that?” he asked.

St. Ives studied the broken glass box for a moment, having overlooked it in the darkness, and then having been distracted by the corpse. Now he noted the thin, bent pieces of lead came within the box, the shards of glass heaped on its floor, the bellows. It was dead clear what he was looking at: the results of a small coal dust explosion, contained within a double box, contrived, no doubt, to impress Moorgate, since Narbondo had proven the effectiveness of his methods often enough to be personally satisfied. Unless, of course, there was more to the trial than that. He studied the magnifying lens, pulling it down and peering through it. Gilbert had told them that a very moderate source of heat might set off the hovering dust. Greek fire might be necessary within the confines of the Fleet Sewer, but not at all necessary in a glass building. Perhaps , he thought, it wasn’t the explosion alone that was of interest…

“Pity to waste this prime top hat,” Tubby said picking it up from the table to inspect it.

On the table lay a human skull that had been hidden under the hat. St. Ives stepped across to look into it, relieved to see that it was from an adult human, not a child. It had been trepanned – a three-inch diameter hole. A litter of small screws lay within, along with bits of copper and silver, beneath which lay a small photographic plate, cracked in half. He drew out the pieces, fitted them together, and peered at it in front of the window. The image of a woman looked back at him, the details very finely rendered, the wisps of hair, her rather coarse complexion, her cheeks rouged – wet plate collodion photography, certainly. She had a look of suspicion on her face, heartlessness, perhaps, which showed through the rouge and powder and paint. Perhaps she was a Dean Street prostitute, St. Ives thought, an easy victim who would scarcely be missed were she to disappear.

“I take it this is one of the fabled skulls,” Tubby said.

“Dismantled, yes. I believe that Narbondo called its ghost forth, if you’ll allow me to use equally fabulous language, imprisoned it within the glass box, and blew it to pieces. I very much hope that its spirit was released from bondage, if that’s the case.”

“Sheer lunacy, it seems to me,” Tubby said. “Do you have any objection to burning the entire lot of it?”

“None whatsoever,” St. Ives said, dropping the pieces of photographic plate back into the skull.