City of Darkness (City of Mystery) (49 page)

“I beg your pardon,” William said,
smiling. “But very soon I shall have any number of practical skills.”

“Well she’s right enough about me,”
Tom said, smiling too.  “I was a detective for precisely one day and managed to
sprain my ankle, dislocate my shoulder, and be knocked to my arse by a
stampeding mob.”

“It’s lucky that we’re rich,”  Geraldine
said, with a sigh.  “Come, Gage, I’ll help you clean up in the kitchen.  Don’t
look at me like that.  You heard Trevor.   There’s a new world order.”

7:45  AM

Trevor met John on the stairway,
coming down.  The two men looked at each other for a moment and then John
dropped his bag and sat down on one of the steps.

“Congratulations,” he said.  “Your path
is clear.  All she could talk about is where Trevor could be, when Trevor is
coming, how profusely she must thank Trevor.”

Trevor shook his head.  “It’s not like
that.”

“Isn’t it?  What chance do I have now?”
  John Harrowman was staring up at him, mixed feelings evident on his face. “You’ve
saved her life, for which I am abundantly grateful….”

“In the line of duty.”

“Perhaps, but in the process you’ve
become the dashing hero.”

“If I saved her, I saved her for you,
as you must surely be aware.”

“You don’t intend to court her?”

“No.  I don’t think I ever really
did,” said Trevor, realizing as he said it that it was true. 

John awkwardly pushed to his feet.  “I
suppose you think I’m an ingrate, speaking like this after you’ve done so
much.”

“What I think is that you’re
exhausted and suffering from delayed shock, as are we all.  No apologies are
necessary.  We simply go forward.  You’ll see to your patients and I’ll see to
my criminals, which we both have in endless supply.”

John nodded uncertainly and walked
down the stairs and out the front door.  Trevor finished climbing the stairs
and stood first in Emma’s doorway, then Leanna’s, speaking to each of them in
turn.  Leanna’s voice was raspy and he waved her silent when she tried to thank
him.  Emma had been nearly asleep, so Trevor likewise kept her visit brief.  There
was nothing left to say to Leanna, not really, and the things he needed to tell
Emma would wait for another day.  He dallied just long enough to give John time
to leave the house and to make sure Geraldine and Gage were busy in the kitchen,
then he went down the stairs where Tom and William were still sitting at the
breakfast table.

“We must talk,” he said quietly.

“Indeed,” said Tom.  “We’ve been
waiting.  Who on earth hired that creature to kill Leanna?”

Trevor pulled up a chair across from
them and fumbled for a way to begin.

“Micha’s confessions are not the
easiest to understand.  His English is suspect under the best of circumstances and
last night he was raving with rage and shaking with cold.  He will stay in jail
a long time on the charges of assault and attempted murder, so there’s a chance
we’ll get more out of him at a later date.  He claimed it was not his idea,
which is probably true, and then he told us a tale that originally I found a
bit hard to believe.  But we’ve done some checking, and it seems his statements
were accurate.”

Trevor took a breath.

“Go on,” Tom said, suspicions
beginning to grow in him.  William had still not looked up from his plate.

“Micha claimed he was hired by two
men, one of them a local named Georgy.  We had no trouble locating him, and
this Georgy, in turn, claimed not to know the name of his co-conspirator.  But
he was quite sure of one thing.  When the time came to pay Micha this second
man had gotten the money by pawning something of value.  Georgy lead us to the
pawn shop first thing this morning and the owner did indeed remember the
transaction.  Not only are items of this quality a rarity in the East End, but
his customer, he said, insisted upon a written receipt.”  Trevor reached into
his pocket, withdrew his notebook, and pulled a folded piece of paper from the
pages.

“You see the signature,” he said, pushing
the receipt toward the brothers.  “Looks as if he started to write a ‘C’ and
then thought the better of it and changed it to an ‘E.’  Do either of you know
a man named Edmund Solmes?”

“Edmund Solmes is our brother Cecil’s
solicitor,” William said, sinking back in his chair. “But I assure you, he
wasn’t the one to sign that receipt.”  Trevor nodded and William put a fist to
his lips.  “I knew Cecil had come to a desperate point but I swear to God I
never thought – “

Trevor shook his head.  “No one’s
suggesting that you did.  I took the liberty of redeeming this item, which I
believe belongs to your mother.”  He extracted a folded handkerchief from his
other pocket and carefully unwrapped the opal and diamond brooch.  The sight of
it shattered the last remnants of Tom’s composure.

“I can hardly believe it,” he said. 
“Cecil is vain and lazy, yes, but to picture him as a murderer - “

“You only say that because you
haven’t been home these past months,” William said.  “His decline has been
swift enough to rival a character in a Greek tragedy and I’m the one to blame
for not seeing where he was headed.   So,” he added, looking across the table
at Trevor.  “Cecil has almost killed our mother with worry and has now
attempted to murder our sister outright.  Please tell me you can find him.”

“We’ll certainly try.  But I must
warn you that, given his proximity to the docks the odds are he’s already fled.
Does he have a favorite place, friends on the continent?  Somewhere he might
try to go?”

“He likes Paris,” William said
bitterly. 

“I have a colleague there I will
contact,” Trevor said.  “But since finding him is, in the language of the
tracks, a long shot, there’s one more thing to discuss.  Should we tell
Leanna?”

“She thinks it was the Ripper,” Tom
said.  “A random attack.”

“It will come out soon enough that
the man we caught isn’t the Ripper,” Trevor said.  “But she still might accept
it was a random attack.  A robbery attempt, a scam built around the lie of Mary
Kelly’s child.  That is what she is primed to believe and we could let her rest
in that belief.”

“And so we shall,” William said
decisively. “She doesn’t need to hear this story and neither does our mother. 
Cecil always spoke of going abroad to seek a rich wife.  America, isn’t that
where all the fortune hunters go?  They’ll accept that explanation for his
absence readily enough.”

Tom nodded at Trevor.  “William’s
right.   Mother and Leanna needn’t know. “

“It’s an infuriating image,” William
said.  “Cecil in his deck chair, sailing for America.”

“If he’s sailing, he’s hardly in a
deck chair,” Trevor said, turning the receipt back toward them.  “Did you
notice how much Cecil got for your precious family heirloom?”

Tom and William leaned toward the
paper and then both erupted into laughter. 

“Perfect,” Tom said.  “I bet he
pissed his pants.”

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

8:20 AM

When Cecil Bainbridge awakened
tangled in fishing nets, the irony was not entirely lost upon him.  He fought
his way free from his briny nest and forced open the top of the crate where he’d
hidden the night before.  The sun was blinding, so he lay back for a moment
with the lid ajar, waiting until his eyes gradually adjusted and he could find
his way out.  The dock was filled with activity and Cecil crouched a few minutes
more behind the crate, watching the people stream by.  He was not likely to see
that Severin character again, he told himself.  At least not in broad
daylight.  Finally Cecil stepped out and stretched, then began his cautious way
along the waterfront. 

There were a few forgotten coins left
in his pants pocket.  Perhaps enough for a plate of eggs or whatever people ate
for breakfast in this godforsaken part of the city.  The day may have been
bright , but the wind coming off the water was brisk enough to send shudders
through Cecil’s body and he went into the first pub he could find and took a seat
at the bar. 

“G’day, Sir,” the barmaid said. 

“Is it?”   Cecil was not only damp
and dirty but cramped from hip to shoulder.  It was nearly too much for a fastidious
man to bear. But he was comforted to know that something about his presence
still commanded respect from a serving girl.

He dug the coins from his pocket and
placed them, in a neat line, on the counter before him.

“What can I get for this?”

“Toast ‘n kippers?”

He nodded.  His eyes stung with salt
and sleep and the remains of last night’s alcohol, but down the bar a bit he
could see an abandoned newspaper.  An early edition, thin and incomplete as
they often were, but he leaned over and seized it.   The headline said RIPPER
THWARTED and beneath it was a picture of the stolid looking man he’d seen the
night before in the Pony Pub and a sprig of a boy who apparently was his
assistant.  They stared out of the grainy photograph as if they had been
startled by the flash.  

Cecil grimly skimmed the article then
dropped the paper with a sigh.  Both Micha and Georgy had been taken into
custody and were likely singing their story to Detective Welles at this very
moment. 

He’d failed.  Leanna and Severin were
both quite utterly alive and if one of them didn’t manage to pull him down, the
other doubtless would.  He may as well finish his breakfast.  He had paid
everything he had in the world for it, and besides to his great surprise, it looked
good.  The kippers fried crispy, the bread fat and brown.  Cecil bit into it
with the concentration of a priest.  There is a certain strange freedom that
sets in when things have gotten as bad as they possibly can, he thought, a
strange certainty that comes when there is only one thing left to do. 

The answer was clear enough.  Run. 
The continent, perhaps, for he had always been fond of Paris and Vienna.  But
those fair cities required scads of money and Cecil lacked even enough for a
channel passage.  He continued to steadily eat as he thought, not overly
concerned with an analysis of where his plan had gone awry, for he suspected he
would have more than enough hours ahead of him to replay the whole affair in
his mind.  Leanna was a damned lucky chit and perhaps that was all there was to
it.  He, in contrast, had apparently been cursed by the gods at birth.

He left his last coin in gratuity,
more from habit than compassion, and the girl squealed “Come back again, Sir.” 

Not bloody likely, Cecil thought, as
he pushed open the scarred door and walked back into the dizzying brightness of
the waterfront.  A dozen or so fishing ships were to be found in the first
basin but he walked swiftly by these, his boots skidding on the dock.  Three
larger ships lay in the next basin and at the first one he was abruptly turned
away.  The second was christened the
Injured Pride
which seemed to be a
favorable omen, and Cecil walked up the ramp.  The captain was too busy poring
over a pad of paper with a stubby pencil to return his greeting, but a
half-dozen or so young boys scurrying about stopped to give him a proper stare.

“May I ask when you’re leaving, Sir?”
Cecil began.

“You may ask and I may answer,” the
captain snorted, spitting into a cup.  Then, glancing up, “The tide turns at
two this afternoon.  What’s it to you?”

“Do you by any chance need an extra
hand for the voyage?”

“You don’t look experienced.”

This was an undisputable observation,
but Cecil knew he had to get out today, not tomorrow or the next.  The captain
turned and Cecil extended an arm to block his progress.  “I won’t pretend I’ve
been to sea, but I’m twenty-four, in good health and I can learn.”

The captain looked at him through
rheumy blue eyes.  “You haven’t asked wages.”

“I don’t care.  I’m seeking passage.”

“You haven’t asked where we be
bound.”

“I don’t rightly care that either.”
Cecil hesitated.  “Sir.”

Surprisingly, this proved to be the
proper answer, for the captain leaned against the ship railing and looked Cecil
from top to bottom, his face contorting in contempt when his glance fell upon
his supple leather boots.  “Well, everyone is running from something,” he
finally allowed.  “I daresay most of my crew didn’t turn to the sea as a first
choice of life’s work.”

I bet the Virgin you’re right on
that, Cecil thought, his eyes flitting from the rotting floorboards to the
frayed rigging.  The tub scarcely looked seaworthy.

“We’re short-handed, true enough,
Cap’n,” piped up one of the ragged boys who had been carrying provisions
aboard.  “What with poor Andy knockin’ up that wench and Harry down with the
misery and a six week passage ahead.”

“Um,” said the captain, his interest
in the subject obviously fading fast.  “So grab one of the crates below, and
come aboard.  What’d you say your name was?”