“Your men?”
“I brought with me from London a number of free agents,” Fallows said. “They are concerned solely with Her Majesty’s visit. I’ve assigned several of them to hunt for Durham. That’s why I need you to inform me of any developments in the case as soon as possible.”
Free agents. Langton wondered about the man who had followed him, or who he’d
thought
might be following him. “Major, how will we know who these men are?”
“You don’t need to. They will not interfere with your investigation. Indeed, I’m sure they will help it.”
Langton carried on alone toward his office. Why hadn’t Fallows told him about these agents before? And why was he so keen to find Durham? Langton realized that Fallows occupied a delicate position between the Queen’s staff, the Liverpool police, the Span Company, and his own superiors. So where did his real sympathies lie?
Seeing Harry coming out of another office, Langton said, “The coffee, Harry?”
“On your desk, sir, with some cheese sandwiches. If Sergeant McBride has left any for you.”
Langton smiled and walked on, then called out, “Harry, who keeps details of government departments? Telephone numbers and the like.”
“Miss Martin on the switchboard, sir. What can I get for you?”
“Information on the Home Office—some kind of directory if she has it.”
As the office boy’s heels clattered down the stairs, Langton pushed open his door. McBride, sandwich in hand, rose from a chair.
Langton waved him down. “Sit. What did you find?”
McBride chewed and swallowed, then said, “Quite a lot, sir, but I don’t know if much of it is any good.”
Langton poured out coffee from the flask and took a sandwich from the pile. He lifted a corner to reveal pungent orange cheese, then set the sandwich down. “Go on.”
McBride wiped his hands and took out his notebook. “Firstly, sir,
Mrs. Dunne, the doctor’s receptionist. She turned up for work same as usual this morning. Seemed very surprised at the doctor’s murder but not that upset. Cold fish, that one. Anyway, seems that Doctor Redfers sent her home early the night before. He had a waiting room full of patients and he sent them home, too. You can imagine how happy they were at that. Half of them arrived this morning for their appointments and they were still hanging around the gates when I left. The constable is having a hell of a time moving them on.”
Langton refilled his cup and asked, “Did Redfers tell Mrs. Dunne why he sent her home early?”
“No, sir, but she said he had a telephone call a few minutes before; she heard the bell ringing.”
“We need to know who called him.”
“I’ve got a man at the exchange,” McBride said. “The operator is going through the records with him.”
“Good. What next?”
“The neighbors, sir. The ones next door and the ones opposite across the park saw a wagon pull up around six. They didn’t think anything much of it. Said that the doctor regularly had deliveries at odd times.”
“Deliveries of what?”
McBride shrugged. “They didn’t know, sir. Didn’t much care. Seems like one of them streets where everyone keeps to themselves, or at least they say they do. But one of the kitchen maids next door, as she was doing the washing up, reckons she saw burly men carrying big jugs or bottles up from the basement.”
Langton’s heart jumped. “Bottles? Or jars?”
“Could have been jars, I suppose. I looked out from the window over her sink, and you can see a bit of the doctor’s garden and the top of the basement steps. Even in daylight it wasn’t much of a view, sir, but she reckons she heard them cursing after they dropped one.”
Langton cursed himself, too. He should have checked the outside of the basement. Then a thought gripped him: That broken jar could
have been Sarah’s; she might be free. He saw McBride reach for a canvas sack stowed beneath the coatrack. “You searched the area?”
“I did, sir.” McBride pushed the sandwiches and coffee to one side and laid out the contents of the sack. “Not much, is it?”
Curved fragments of thick brown clay. Glazed on both sides. One smooth lip bordered with green wax.
Almost afraid to touch the debris, Langton reached out and picked up a shard. From the curve of the base fragments, he guessed the container had been at least a foot in diameter. The same as the dust rings left on the empty shelves.
“What do you think he was up to, sir?” McBride asked. “Drugs or liquor? Haven’t found any liquor still, though.”
Instead of answering, Langton weighed the largest fragment in his hand. Nothing. No strange visions in his mind. No echoes of the dead and dying. No echoes of Sarah.
Had he really expected that to happen? After all, what were the chances of such a coincidence? He held only inert clay, dead splinters, but sharp enough to draw blood; he dabbed at his cut finger. “Anything else from Redfers’s house?”
“The maid, Agnes, has moved out and gone back to her family in Chester. She asked if it was all right and I couldn’t see any reason why not, sir.”
Still inspecting the shards, Langton nodded his agreement. He could see the inside of the dead doctor’s basement, with its rows of dusty shelves, its white tiled walls like some infirmary ward or theater. Clinical.
“I heard you ran into Durham, sir,” McBride said, looking at Langton’s hands.
“He eluded me again, Sergeant. He’s resourceful, I have to give him that.”
“I don’t get it, sir.”
Langton looked up.
“Why’s he still here?” McBride said. “I mean, there are docks full
of ships going all over the world. He could sign on any one of them, no questions asked. Why’s he staying put?”
Langton had to agree. “Something is keeping him here. Some bond or commitment.”
“A woman?”
Langton remembered the camp. “The woman who shielded Durham admitted that they knew each other but not to the point of any great romance, although she obviously liked him and could be lying. She said he had no visitors and seemed to be waiting for something. Or someone.”
Both men fell silent. The sound of traffic drifted up from Victoria Street: horses’ hooves, steam cars, the arc and whine of trams.
“Maybe it really is some kind of Boer conspiracy, sir,” McBride said. “Maybe he’s waiting for the Queen’s visit. Him and Kepler might have had a bit of business planned.”
Langton hoped not, but what else could Durham want? “Revenge.”
“Sir?”
“Supposing Durham did not kill Kepler—he could be waiting to repay the murderer. That suggests he knows who the murderer is and cannot reach him, or he’s waiting for us to unearth the man.” Unbidden, the name of Doktor Glass appeared in Langton’s mind.
McBride considered the theory. “Could be, sir.”
It still didn’t answer why the two men had signed up to the Span Company and what their intentions had been.
A knock at the door preceded Harry, who bore a thick, dog-eared ledger bound in blue, and a newspaper. “The Home Office directory, sir. Miss Martin wants it back soon as you’ve finished with it.”
Langton passed the directory to McBride, saying, “Look for Major Fallows.”
Then, to Harry, “Is the paper for me, too?”
“The sergeant on the front desk thought you’d want to see this, sir.” Harry laid the local tabloid on the desk and backed away as if afraid it might combust.
Banner headlines across the front:
Faceless Corpse Case—More Murders.
And a subheading:
Police Baffled.
The article continued with news of Stoker Olsen and Doctor Redfers, quoting liberally from a “confidential source” who stated the three deaths were part of a Boer plot against “Her Illustrious Majesty and the Engineering Marvel of the Transatlantic Span.” The journalist knew about Kepler’s disfigurement and his tattoos, as well as Redfers’s money hidden away. The final sentence berated the police for not breaking up the plot and for allowing Kepler’s accomplice, Durham, to escape.
Langton saw McBride and Harry staring at him, obviously waiting. Keeping his voice level, Langton told McBride, “Go to the newspaper offices on Old Hall Street and ask them how they found out all these details. They must have someone inside our office; only a few people knew about the tattoos and the money.”
McBride made for the door. “What will the Chief Inspector and the major say when they read that?”
“I’ll deal with them,” Langton said, folding the newspaper very carefully. Despite his calm confidence, he had no idea what he’d say to Purcell and Fallows. He could imagine their reactions when they found out.
Harry stood at the door. “You need anything, sir?”
“You can get me the next edition of the paper. The evening issue, when it comes out.”
Langton stowed the newspaper in his desk and turned around the Home Office directory that McBride had opened. Arranged alphabetically, and then by department and section, the directory listed every member of staff in the Home Office. Langton flicked through the pages.
No entry for Major Fallows. Nothing in the alphabetic section; nothing by department. So much for finding out who Fallows worked for. Then Langton found a name he recognized: Peter Doran. He remembered him as a big, bluff Irishman who’d worked his way up
through the Liverpool police to become the liaison between the civilian police authority and the force. Promotion, the year before, had taken him to London.
Langton scribbled a telegram and searched the corridor for Harry, who ran off downstairs with the message. The office boy almost collided with someone coming up the stairs.
“Whoa, Harry.”
“Sorry, Inspector.”
Forbes Paterson shook his head as Harry clattered down the steps. “Keen, that boy of yours.”
Langton smiled. “He dreams of solving a case all by himself.”
“As do we all.” Paterson approached Langton and said, “We must talk.”
Langton led him into the office, closed the door, and waited.
Forbes Paterson didn’t sit down; he paced behind the desk for a minute, then stared at Langton. “You’re still searching for the Jar Boys? For Doktor Glass?”
Even with Purcell’s warning clear in his memory, Langton said, “I am.”
“Then I might have a proposition for you.” Forbes Paterson took a deep breath before he said, “You wondered if we could set a trap for them. But a trap needs bait. It seems that the good Lord has provided us with exactly that.”
A
S HE DRESSED
at home in preparation for the reception at the Professor’s house, Langton thought of Forbes Paterson, who had poured out his plan’s details while pacing the floor of Langton’s office like a bear in a cage.
It seemed that a woman had complained to the police, and her story had reached Paterson. The widowed woman, Mrs. Barker, reasonably well off and living in Wavertree with her close family, had a seventeen-year-old niece suffering from Bright’s disease, a degenerative, terminal condition that caused immense suffering. The doctors could only ease the poor girl’s pain while the family waited for the inevitable.
Then, late in the evening two days before, a man had visited Mrs. Barker. Well spoken, very smart, and polite, he came with a bizarre offer: to attach an apparatus to the fading niece’s body to both ease her pain and save her soul. His explanations sounded persuasive and straightforward; he had “saved” many people in this way. The fee would be moderate.
The family, devout Catholics all, had thrown the man out of their
house. The whole idea reeked of heresy. First thing the next day, Mrs. Barker had stormed around to her local police station, seething with anger and determined to report the man.
“Of course, we had to explain he’d committed no crime,” Paterson had said. “We could only arrest him for assault if he laid hands on Mrs. Barker’s poor niece.”
Now, remembering the look of distaste on Paterson’s face, Langton paused in dressing. He looked in the full-length mirror at his smart dinner suit, white silk waistcoat, and gaunt features. Nurse Milne was right; he did not look healthy. Not like Forbes Paterson with his stout frame and ruddy complexion. But those features had darkened with anger as Paterson talked of Mrs. Barker’s dilemma.
“It sickened her,” Paterson had said, “just as it sickens me. God knows how many poor families these men have swindled. Or worse. And they get away scot-free. That’s when Mrs. Barker suggested a plan…”
Paterson swore that Mrs. Barker suggested entrapment, not he. She offered to contact the man, via the telephone number on the card he had left, and arrange for him to return with his apparatus. The police could wait close by or in the room itself, and arrest the man and his accomplices as they connected their machine.
Paterson didn’t like it but he wanted to catch these men, and he knew that Langton wanted them, so he had agreed. And he wanted Langton there.
Langton glanced at the sheet of notepaper on the dresser. He had Mrs. Barker’s address and had promised to meet Forbes Paterson there at midnight. The Jar Boys were due to arrive at one in the morning. And what would Langton do when he met them? Demand news of Sarah? Of Redfers? Or try to find the trail back to Doktor Glass?
That part of his work did not trouble him. No, he most feared meeting Mrs. Barker’s dying niece. He looked around his bedroom. Not enough time had passed since he had sat on the side of that very bed, there, and held Sarah’s hand while the drugs had struggled to do
their work. He didn’t know if he could trust himself. He felt like one of the Span’s great cables wound too tight. Even braided steel snapped under enough strain.
Langton rested his head against the cool glass of the mirror. He had a job to do; he must concentrate. For Sarah.
He reached for his bow tie and tried to fasten it. Sarah had always helped him when they had to dress for functions or dinners. After minutes of fumbling with the white silk tie, Langton gave up. He slid Mrs. Barker’s address into his pocket and swapped the Webley from his Ulster to his dress coat. Downstairs, he found Elsie tidying the sitting room.
“Let me, sir.” She wiped her hands on her apron and reached up to Langton’s neck for the bow tie. A few quick passes of her hands, then, “There we are, sir. You look very smart, if you don’t mind me saying so.”