The Casebook of Newbury & Hobbes (35 page)

Rutherford had never heard this tale before, and was tempted to press Angelchrist for the full story. But it would have to wait for another occasion. They were already running behind.

He glanced out of the window at the butler, who was standing like a bemused sentry at the gate. Rutherford offered him a quick wave, before releasing the handbrake and easing his foot down on the accelerator.

The car purred away from the kerb. Snowflakes had begun to flutter on the breeze, and they dashed themselves against the windscreen with desperate abandon. Rutherford watched them disintegrate where they fell, before sweeping them away with a flick of the wiper blades.

“How are you, Professor?” he asked, once he’d finished swinging the vehicle around in a U-turn in order to head back towards Central London.

“Tired, Mr Rutherford. And old. But I admit, you’ve piqued my interest.” He glanced sidelong at Rutherford, who kept his eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead. “What is the purpose of this little outing?”

“I was hoping you could tell me more about Sir Charles Bainbridge,” said Rutherford, levelly.

“Aha! I knew you had an ulterior motive for dragging me out of the house!” said Angelchrist, laughing. “What is it you’re getting at? What do you wish to know?”

“I’m interested in hearing more about your friendship,” said Rutherford, “how you met Sir Charles, and likewise, Sir Maurice and Miss Hobbes.”

“May I enquire as to why?” said Angelchrist, although it was clear from his tone that he was not in any way put out by Rutherford’s questioning. He was an old hand at interrogation and the ways of the Service, and he appeared more amused than perturbed. Besides, Rutherford imagined it provided him a rare opportunity to talk.

“Let’s call it... idle curiosity,” replied Rutherford. “I’m sure everything will become clear. I’d ask that you indulge me for just a little longer.”

“Very well,” said Angelchrist, amused. “I’ll play along with your little game, Mr Rutherford. But let me be clear—my relationship with the people you mentioned did not begin with friendship.”

“It didn’t?” said Rutherford, frowning. “I understood you were firm friends for many years. When we spoke about the matter of the Maharajah’s Star—”

Angelchrist held up a hand to silence him. “I said it didn’t begin with friendship, Mr Rutherford. That came a little later. At first things were fairly antagonistic between us, particularly between myself and Miss Hobbes. I represented an unknown quantity, you see. Perhaps even a threat.”

“A threat?” queried Rutherford.

Angelchrist nodded. “In 1902 the Secret Service was a fledgling operation. Sir Charles had been brought in to consult for the Home Secretary, but I was the man charged with actually putting the team together. There was a great deal of ill feeling amongst the Crown agents, who were suspicious of our motives. They thought we were looking to usurp them. Even the Queen herself worked to fuel their discontent. She turned us into enemies.”

“For what purpose?”

“To undermine us. To stunt the growth of our organisation. You must remember that the climate was one of utter paranoia. The Queen held sway over an absolute autocracy, and she feared the Secret Service was an attempt by the government to make a grab for power. So she turned her agents against us, instructed them to block us at every turn. She tried to make enemies out of us in order to protect her own interests.”

“So... you and Sir Charles were on opposing sides?” said Rutherford, intrigued.

“So the Queen would have had it. In truth, Charles never accepted her position on the matter. He was the first to come round, when he saw the good work we were doing. It was around this time that he’d begun to question the motivations of the monarch and to see the value in an independent network of agents. Of course, we were not entirely without prejudice ourselves, but we certainly had the best interests of the nation at heart. Charles and I became staunch allies, despite the Queen’s insistence to the contrary, and soon after we developed into firm friends.”

“What of Sir Maurice, then?” asked Rutherford.

“Newbury trusted Charles. It’s as simple as that. And, I suppose, he too saw evidence of our good work. He welcomed me into their circle, and before long I was visiting Newbury’s Chelsea home to while away long evenings with him and Charles,” said Angelchrist, with a distant smile.

“But Miss Hobbes was much less forthcoming?” said Rutherford, echoing Angelchrist’s earlier statement. He was surprised by this news; in his—admittedly limited—experience, Miss Hobbes had always proved perfectly charming and approachable.

“Indeed,” said Angelchrist, “although I cannot blame her. It was my fault, you see. I didn’t give the woman enough credit. I didn’t deem it appropriate to include her. And so her suspicions found fertile ground in my evasiveness, and she feared I was involving her friends in nefarious schemes—schemes, in fact, that might endanger their lives and risk the retribution of the monarch.” He sighed. “It is one of my biggest regrets, Mr Rutherford, that those suspicions led Miss Hobbes into harm’s way. Had she died, I might never have been able to live with myself.”

“You’re talking about the Executioner?” asked Rutherford, softly. He’d read the reports of the time, of how a murderess had run rampant through the capital, executing Crown agents and excising their hearts as grisly trophies. Miss Hobbes had been her final victim.

Angelchrist nodded. He was silent for a moment, and Rutherford was unsure whether he was avoiding further discourse on the topic, or simply ordering his thoughts. “So, you know of the Executioner,” he said, a moment later. “Then you understand that Miss Hobbes had good reason to distrust me. In her eyes I was largely responsible for what became of her.”

Rutherford eased on the brake as they approached a junction, and then took a right turn, exiting onto a broad, empty road. The surface was dusted with fresh, white snow. He gunned the accelerator and moved away, steadying the wheel with both hands as the tyres slipped on the wet road. “But reparations were eventually made?” he said.

“Yes. It was during that business with the Undying that Miss Hobbes and I finally came to an understanding,” said Angelchrist, seemingly happy with the more positive direction the conversation was taking.

“Go on,” prompted Rutherford.

Angelchrist glanced across at him. “Are you aware of the Undying, Mr Rutherford?”

Rutherford shook his head.

“Then what I’m about to tell you may be quite disturbing. I know already that I am able to rely on your discretion,” said Angelchrist, pointedly.

“Of course,” said Rutherford, intrigued.

“Very well. You may already be aware that my family has a... dark and chequered past?”

Rutherford shook his head again, keeping his eyes on the road. “No. I wasn’t aware of that.”

Angelchrist chuckled quietly to himself. “I come from a long line of peers, many of whom were known to have indulged in somewhat dubious practices. Back in 1902, my last surviving relative—an uncle—passed away of natural causes, leaving me to inherit the family seat, an old pile up in Oxfordshire.”

“You own an estate in Oxfordshire?” said Rutherford, surprised.

“I once did. I long ago donated it to a far more worthy cause. At the time, however, I was quite taken with the notion of living out my dotage in a place like that.” Angelchrist laughed. “I moved in with the idea of weekending at the house, remodelling it to suit my needs. I’d thought to spend my week in London, in a rented flat, and to use the old house as a place to escape to when time and duty permitted. The house itself was relatively sound—for a fifteenth-century mansion—but the grounds had been left to go to wrack and ruin. I began my renovations by having the woods cut back and the lake dredged and reshaped.”

“And I’d wager you found something unexpected?” prompted Rutherford.

Angelchrist gave him a sly look. “Quite so, Mr Rutherford. A hansom carriage at the bottom of the mere.”

“A hansom carriage?” repeated Rutherford.

“Indeed. With some surprising—and somewhat grisly—cargo on board.”

“A corpse?”

“In a manner of speaking. The remains of an unidentifiable creature,” said Angelchrist.

“Due to its condition?” asked Rutherford.

“No. Although I grant you, it had clearly been there for some time. More because it appeared to have some... human qualities, but was taller and broader than a man, with long bony protrusions along its spine and sharp, black talons at the tips of its fingers. It appeared that the hansom had been pushed into the mere with the corpse already in the back.”

“With a view to concealing it,” Rutherford surmised.

“Quite so,” said Angelchrist. “Well, I sent directly for Newbury. As you know, he’s something of an expert when it comes to such things.”

“Was he able to establish the true nature of the corpse?” said Rutherford, glancing over at his passenger. Angelchrist was staring thoughtfully out of the window, seeing ghosts in the snow.

“He came immediately, on the very next train, bringing Sir Charles and Miss Hobbes along with him. He donned a diving suit and went down to the wreck, but found nothing further of note. He could not identify the creature, but knew of a man in London who might help; a zoologist at the Natural History Museum who specialised in the study of unusual or previously unrecorded beasts. We had the remains moved forthwith, and the very next day we followed them back to the capital.” Angelchrist was toying with his cane, rolling it back and forth between his palms as he recalled the details of his tale.

“Well, the findings were quite remarkable,” he continued. “Newbury’s specialist—a Mr John Farrowdene—proved that the creature was, in fact, human. The evidence was irrefutable. The young man—victim, volunteer, I do not know—had been so altered through surgery and selective breeding that he was barely recognisable as a man at all. What was more, this wasn’t the first example of its kind the zoologist had seen; there were at least two others like it, and he showed us what was left of them, stored in a taxidermist’s room deep in the bowels of the museum.”

“Who could have done such a thing?” said Rutherford, disgusted by the very idea.

“I’m surprised you need to ask, Mr Rutherford. It transpired the creatures were the result of an abominable eugenics programme sponsored by the Queen. The surgeons in question had been experimenting with life extension, and with the weaponising of human beings. The programme had been deemed a failure, however, and had been shut down a couple of years earlier. What the Queen and her cronies didn’t know, of course, is that a number of the test subjects had escaped into the sewer systems beneath London, where they’d formed a bizarre and primitive community. They’d begun to breed amongst themselves.”

“Good Lord,” said Rutherford, shaking his head. He’d known that Queen Victoria had, in her later years, begun to pursue all manner of increasingly desperate avenues to combat her degenerative condition, but experimenting on her own people in such a way... it seemed so barbaric. “And the hansom cab? Why had it been dumped at the bottom of your family’s mere?”

“Ah,” said Angelchrist. “It seems my late uncle had been somehow involved in establishing the aforementioned programme for the Queen. The corpse in the hansom was—he believed—the last evidence of their gruesome experimentation. A most inefficient means of covering his tracks, but then he always was an arrogant blighter.”

Rutherford flicked the lever behind the steering wheel to increase the frequency of the windscreen wipers; the flurry of snow was now making it difficult to see. He leaned forward, peering out of the windscreen. “So, what was it about this particular matter that helped to bring you and Miss Hobbes to an understanding?” he said.

Angelchrist laughed again. “Danger, Mr Rutherford. It’s surprising what being trapped together in the sewers by a horde of mutants can do for your relationship with a lady.”

“You went down there?” said Rutherford.

“We did,” replied Angelchrist, “and discovered an entire colony of the creatures. At first they proved damn hostile, too—particularly after Charles attacked one of them with his cane.”

“A colony? Right there beneath the capital?” Rutherford tried unsuccessfully to keep the incredulity out of his voice.

“Quite so. At least thirty or forty of the creatures, living in squalor amongst the dank, foetid tunnels down there. They’d built a kind of shanty town from scavenged materials, huts and hammocks and the like. They separated us and dragged us to holding pens, such as the kind one might imagine would be employed by those uncivilised natives of the Amazon basin. Miss Hobbes and I were held in one pen, while Charles and Newbury were held in two others.” Angelchrist chuckled. “To be honest with you, Mr Rutherford, we all thought the game was up. The creatures were so strong and determined. There was little hope of effecting an escape. So, with nothing else to do, I used the opportunity to make my peace with Miss Hobbes.”

Rutherford nodded. He’d been in similar situations himself, and he recognised the impulse—or rather the need—to set things right before it was too late. “What happened?” he asked.

“Newbury,” said Angelchrist. “Newbury happened. He was so calm and collected, even in the direst of situations. He established that, despite all indications to the contrary, the creatures still understood English. And he reasoned with them. He made a deal. He explained who we were and that we represented no real harm.”

“They accepted his word?” said Rutherford, incredulous.

“They might have been creatures, Mr Rutherford, but they were not monsters, despite their appearance. Newbury made it clear to them that we would protect their secret; we would not report our findings, and their underground home would not be disturbed. They allowed us to walk free.” Angelchrist sighed, leaning back in his seat. “And as far as I’m aware, none of us ever did repeal our word. We never spoke of it again, not even amongst ourselves.”

“So they’re still there, down beneath us now?” said Rutherford.

“Quite possibly,” replied Angelchrist, levelly. “I’ve heard reports over the years, sightings of ‘bogeymen’ in the sewers or alleyways of the city, and I admit to you, I’ve taken heart from such things. It gives me hope that their colony is still alive and flourishing. After everything that was done to those people, it is the least we can hope for.”