Langton thought for a moment, then stood and swallowed his beer.
“I can think of one way to catch him. It would be difficult, possibly immoral, and definitely dangerous.”
“How?”
Langton said, “We set a trap.”
* * *
B
Y THE TIME
Langton left the public house, the streets had filled with people. Homeward-bound commuters huddled beneath the tram stop glass shelters; office workers, clerks, and secretaries hurried along with heads bowed against the cold. At street level, most of the snow had melted. Wet pavements reflected yellow gaslight.
Langton checked his watch and then searched the congested roads for a hansom cab. He walked up Castle Street and all the way to Dale Street before he could flag down a driver. “Gladstone Crescent, and hurry.”
“Do the best I can, sir.”
As the cab lurched away into the stream of traffic, Langton hoped Doctor Redfers would wait for him. Langton hadn’t expected to spend so much time with Paterson. Had it been a waste? Paterson had confirmed what Mrs. Grizedale, Sister Wright, and the Professor had all stated: The Jar Boys existed. Now Langton had no option but to accept them as a fact.
But he’d had no right to ask Paterson to consider setting a trap. After all, the Jar Boys might play only a small part in the case of the murdered Kepler. Hand on heart, Langton knew he should not have asked Paterson to consider such a dangerous and possibly immoral trap. It might be different if the whole case pivoted on them, but Langton had to admit that it would be for Sarah’s benefit and for his own peace of mind. He almost asked the driver to turn the cab around.
“Gladstone Crescent, sir.”
Langton paid the driver and climbed the steps of the three-story town house set opposite a well-tended park bordered by iron railings.
He rang the brass bell and waited. Most of the house lay in darkness, with not even a glimmer in the transom above the door, but one dim light glowed in a room to the left. Redfers’s consulting room.
Langton rang again. No answer. Obviously, Redfers had left for the evening or did not wish to be disturbed. That didn’t explain why the maid didn’t open the door. Langton hesitated, looking up and down the quiet crescent, then tried the door handle; it turned in his hand.
“Redfers? It’s Langton.”
The cold hallway led into darkness. Slipping inside, Langton eased the door shut and stood there, listening. The tick of the grandfather clock. No voices. No murmurs. No movement.
The narrow central strip of carpet on the parquet floor silenced Langton’s steps. He tried to remember the layout of the house from his last visit. He pushed open the first door to his right and saw the waiting room. The light of a dying fire in the grate. Empty, hard wooden chairs surrounding a massive table. Pot plants.
Redfers’s rooms stood opposite the waiting room. Langton put his ear to the closed door but heard only his own pulse. He reached for the handle. Every sense seemed sharper: the odors of disinfectant and tobacco smoke; the feel of the cold, smooth brass as he turned the handle. His eyes, adjusting to the meager light from under the door, scanned the receptionist’s empty room in a moment. Her desk, neat and clear apart from the squat typewriter under its cover. The file cabinets closed. Nothing in disarray.
Langton crossed the room and hesitated outside Redfers’s door. He knocked but heard no response. He stood to one side, turned the handle, and pushed the door open with his right foot. Nobody rushed out.
He peered around the edge of the door and saw Redfers sitting at a wide desk. The doctor’s head rested back against the high leather armchair. His mouth hung slack. Langton half-expected to hear snores. An electric table lamp threw white light onto the scattered papers and files. In the corner, a bleached skeleton hung from its support.
“Redfers?”
Langton slipped inside the room. Little heat came from the fire, which had almost died down to nothing. He sniffed at the odor, something chemical akin to bitter almonds with perhaps a hint of white flowers. “Redfers?”
Another two strides brought him to the desk. The dead doctor gripped the arms of the chair like a falling man clutching a parapet; the tendons stood out like steel cables on the Span.
Langton raised the lampshade and saw Redfers’s eyes wide and dilated, staring straight ahead. The light glinted on metal; below Redfers’s chin, just above his necktie, jutted the snapped shaft of the spike that pinned his neck to the back of the chair. Only a trickle of blood showed around the wound.
Langton listened for a moment. He thought he’d heard floorboards creak. He reached for the telephone on the desk, then saw the cord severed and hanging. He turned to the door, then back to Redfers. By twisting the lamp slightly, he threw light onto the doctor’s neck. At the sides, just under the ears, he saw two small patches of burned skin.
Standing on the top step at the front of the house, Langton put his police whistle to his lips and blew three piercing blasts. He repeated the summons at minute intervals until he heard the pounding of constables’ boots from the neighboring streets.
Even as the first breathless constable arrived, Langton had hailed a cab. For, as if to deprive Langton of information or to remove witnesses, someone had killed Stoker Olsen and then Doctor Redfers. And Langton remembered someone else connected to Sarah, someone even more vulnerable than the dead men: Mrs. Grizedale.
B
EFORE THE HANSOM
cab stopped moving, Langton jumped out and ran to the front door of Mrs. Grizedale’s house in Hamlet Street. Every window blazed with light. The constable who opened the front door stared at Langton in surprise, then stood aside at the sight of his warrant card. “The body’s upstairs, sir.”
Taking three stairs at a time, Langton ran up to the second floor, all the while cursing himself for allowing this to happen.
A bedroom door stood open at the head of the stairs. Instead of Mrs. Grizedale’s body, Langton saw a man sprawled out on the floor beside the chaise longue like a marionette with severed strings. He was roughly dressed in torn woolen trousers, a navy jacket, and scuffed boots, and a flat cap that had slipped from his balding head and over his face as he fell; Langton wanted to raise it but left it in place until Fry’s photographers arrived. Langton could see from the pale skin and tonsure of grey hair that it was not Durham.
The man’s body hid his left hand, but the right clutched the edge of the rug he lay upon. A long steel knife had rolled under the chaise
longue. Langton couldn’t see any marks on the blade, but blood seeped from under the body and merged with the expensive carpet. Langton tried to understand how the man had died. He stood up and found Mrs. Grizedale in the doorway. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, then looked down at the body and back at Langton. “It was self-defense.”
“I know.”
“He forced the back window…”
Langton steered her out of the room, but she gripped his arm and said, “Don’t let them take her away.”
“Her?”
“Meera. She did it to protect me.”
Langton understood. “Meera killed him?”
“She heard my shout and ran in from her own room. I didn’t know she kept a gun, but I’ll swear it was mine, I will…” Mrs. Grizedale covered her face.
As a medium, Mrs. Grizedale must surely be more sensitive than most people. Langton wondered if the man’s death had affected more than her emotions; had she detected some…resonance? Some echo? With these thoughts, Langton realized how far he’d gone down the path of superstition and the supernatural. He had allowed talk of the paranormal to infect his perspective. That might prove dangerous.
With his arm around her shoulders, Langton guided her across the landing. He saw Meera coming upstairs with a tray holding china mugs and a bottle of brandy. She stopped when she saw Langton, then continued into her own room. She pulled Mrs. Grizedale away from Langton and sat her on the bed. “You have some tea, missy, and a little sniff of brandy.”
Then Meera looked up at Langton. Her ordeal didn’t appear to have upset her; on the contrary, her voice sounded calm. “Will they take me?”
“No,” Langton said. “Just explain that it was self-defense. Every householder is entitled to protect themselves against burglars.”
“He was no burglar.”
Langton wondered how much she knew. “Have you ever seen this man before?”
“Never.”
“Nobody hanging around? Perhaps watching the house?”
Meera smoothed her employer’s hair and told Langton, “We get none of this before. Very quiet here. Till now.”
He looked into her unblinking eyes and said, “Is there somewhere safe you and Mrs. Grizedale could stay?”
“With my family,” Meera said. “They’ll help us.”
“Good.” Langton nodded and turned to leave. “Don’t worry, I’ll have a word with the officer in charge. Let me know where I can find you.”
“Why?”
“It might be important.”
“You bring this trouble,” Meera said. “This is your doing.”
Langton couldn’t disagree with that. He left the two women and found the constable in the hall. Meera had given the young man a mug of tea, probably laced with brandy, which he tried to hide before Langton nodded approval. “What happened?”
“Well, sir, I was up on Alder Road, doing my rounds, when I heard a woman screaming for help. I ran down and found the maid pulling the older woman back in from the upstairs window. Fair bellowing, she was. Anyway, the maid let me in and I saw the burglar stretched out on the floor. Dead as he could be.”
“Where’s the gun?”
The constable patted his tunic pocket. “Maid gave it me, sir. Will you take it?”
Langton wondered whether to stay and supervise, but he wanted to get back to Redfers’s house. Just then, he heard the chugging of a steam car from outside. He looked through the window and saw two constables and a local sergeant climbing out of the hissing vehicle. He found his pocketbook and took out two notes. “Do something for me,
constable: See that the two women leave here tonight. Take a cab and go with them, and make sure they reach the maid’s family safely. I’ll have a word with the sergeant.”
The constable took the money. “I’ll see to it, sir. And as to what happened here…”
“Self-defense, no doubt about it.”
As the local police entered, Langton took the sergeant aside and explained his presence and what had happened. “When the photographers have finished, please have the body taken to Doctor Fry at headquarters.”
With that, Langton found his waiting cab and returned to Gladstone Crescent. As with Mrs. Grizedale’s house, light now poured from every window. Two police wagons stood at the door and a handful of cold, curious loafers pestered the constable on duty. Inside the house, Langton saw McBride and Doctor Fry examining the body of Redfers.
Fry, probe in hand, stood up and nodded to Langton. “This is getting to be quite an epidemic for you.”
“What have you found?”
“Much as you see: death caused by a single stab wound through the trachea and spine. A very neat job.”
“And the…” Langton rubbed his own neck, just below the ears.
“Yes, I saw those.” Fry glanced at McBride, then said, “The same as on our faceless friend. I take it this is part of the same case?”
Langton didn’t answer. With Redfers’s murder and Mrs. Grizedale’s intruder, the two divergent strands, Sarah and Kepler, seemed almost to meet. What possible connection could there be between Sarah and Kepler? On the face of it, none.
Langton told Fry, “I have another one for you.”
“You’re not serious.”
“I’m afraid so. Hamlet Street in Everton.”
For a moment, Langton thought that McBride started in surprise.
“And he’s connected with this?” Fry said. “The same case again?”
“Perhaps. On the margin.”
Fry started packing his instruments into his bag and signaled for the attendants to remove the body. “I don’t know what you’re on the trail of, Langton, but I hope you find it soon.”
“So do I. Can you let me have the postmortem results as soon as possible?”
Fry checked his watch and sighed. “So much for
The Marriage of Figaro
.”
As Fry left and the attendants transferred Redfers to the stretcher, Langton thought about all the late nights he himself had worked. All those missed dinners, the evenings when he should have returned home to Sarah. If only he could have that time back.
“I called in at your house, sir,” McBride said. “Elsie was kind enough to give me this address. For a moment, when I got here…”
“You thought they’d got me?”
McBride nodded.
That made Langton realize how much the case had developed. Already he and McBride had a vague enemy: “they,” an amorphous form that seemed all the more powerful because of their ambiguity. Doktor Glass? The figure certainly had a link with the Jar Boys and therefore possibly with Sarah, but Langton couldn’t yet see any connection to the Span or Kepler.
Langton called McBride into the waiting room. He shut the door. “We have a problem.”
“Sir?”
“Someone knows our every move,” Langton said, “almost as soon as we do. Stoker Olsen died hours after we met him. I make arrangements to see Redfers; he dies.”
“And this Hamlet Street, sir? Part of the same?”
“It’s beginning to look that way.” Langton paced the room. “Whoever we’re up against, they have an efficient network in place. They must have, unless they just happened to hear Perkins speak of Olsen in the pub.”
“Sir? Like some kind of conspiracy?”
“Perhaps so.” What would interest conspirators? “The Span.”
“Sir?”
“From the start, Sergeant, I knew the Span lay at the root of all this. Either Kepler was part of some conspiracy or he fought against it. Each of the reasons could explain his murder.”
McBride folded his arms. “I don’t know, sir. Some secret conspiracy, blokes wandering around like Fenians or anarchists in big cloaks…Seems a bit far-fetched. And how does this Doctor Redfers and your dead man in Hamlet Street fit into it?”
That threw Langton. “I don’t know. Not yet. But if someone is following us around and erasing possible witnesses, there’s another they might be interested in: Professor Caldwell Chivers.”