“Why don’t you take the rest of the evening off? I won’t be back until late. Very late.”
“Thank you, sir, but I’ll wait in. Just in case anyone calls.” Elsie made herself busy, plumping cushions and adjusting ornaments that didn’t need adjusting. As if in passing, she asked, “Would Sergeant McBride be going with you this evening, sir?”
Langton paused at the doorway and smiled. “He is. In fact—”
The horse and carriage that Langton had heard drew up outside. The front door bell chimed. Langton stood aside as Elsie let in McBride, and said, “Sergeant, I’ll be a minute or two. I left something upstairs.”
It wasn’t a complete lie; as well as giving McBride and Elsie a moment to themselves, Langton had remembered Redfers’s diary. He transferred it from the pocket of his Ulster to the locked drawer of his bureau. He made plenty of noise coming down the stairs and found Elsie and McBride standing apart in the hall, both blushing like children. “Don’t wait for me, Elsie. And make sure you lock up.”
Outside, Langton found that a heavy, colloidal fog had descended. The vapor tasted of coal smoke and brine, with perhaps the hint of white flowers. The oil lamps on the hansom cab burned like inflamed
eyes. Langton climbed up and waited until the cab had pulled away before he asked, “What happened at the newspaper?”
“No luck, sir,” McBride said. “The editor wouldn’t say where he got the article from. Wouldn’t budge, no matter what I said. He swore he trusted the facts.”
“Then it’s someone on the inside.” Langton stared out at darkness interspersed with white and yellow smears. “Someone who knew about Kepler’s tattoos and what they meant; someone who knew about the money in Redfers’s various accounts.”
For a brief moment, Langton wondered about McBride, then scolded himself. He trusted his sergeant completely; the man had joined the police as a cadet at fourteen, and the force was his life.
“I’ve other news, sir,” McBride said. “When I went back to the station I found a telegram from the Martin’s Bank on Victoria Street, the one checking the serial numbers of the notes we found in Gloucester Road.”
Kepler’s and Durham’s hidden funds. “They traced them?”
“Some of them, sir. The banks don’t record what happens to pound notes, but they do with the fives and tens. Seems that the notes we found were issued in London seven months ago, part of a cash transfer—two thousand pounds—made to the paymaster general.”
Langton stared at the indistinct figure of the sergeant. “Government money?”
“So it seems, sir.”
Kepler and Durham had sent many telegrams to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Their money came from the government. The connection was obvious, but had they worked directly for the FCO or had they been paid mercenaries? Kepler’s history would imply the latter, but Langton had known several Boers who had turned and become Queen’s agents during the conflict. And some of them had turned back again to the Boer cause. Off the battlefield, away from straightforward combat between recognizable enemies, the fight became more complex, more convoluted.
If Durham did work for Her Majesty’s government, why did he insist on fleeing?
The hatch in the cab ceiling opened and the driver called down, “Upper Parliament Street, sir.”
Through the misted window, a constellation of blurred lights. Illumination poured from every window of the Professor’s mansion. More lights decorated the iron railings and gates, giving the appearance of some enchanted festivities quite separate from everyday existence. Indeed, the mansion seemed almost to float in the darkness. As the cab threaded its way between the lines of carriages and cars lining the curved gravel drive, Langton heard a distant melody, violins and piano.
“Find what you can from the drivers and maids,” Langton told McBride as the cab pulled up in front of the portico. “Be discreet but sound them out about any visits to Redfers, or about Kepler.”
“Should be easy, sir, what with them being in the news. Should I wait for you?”
Langton paused, his hand on the cab door. He hadn’t told McBride about Forbes Paterson and the trap in Wavertree. “No, you go home when you’ve found what you can. I won’t expect you in the office early.”
Even as he climbed the mansion steps and heard the cab’s iron-shod wheels crunching gravel as it turned, Langton knew that McBride would probably be in the station before him the next morning. He looked up and saw a stout, balding butler in black tailcoat. The figure stood framed by the hallway’s yellow light.
As Langton reached the threshold, the waiting butler bowed. “May I see your invitation, sir?”
“Sister Wright invited me.”
“I see. Would you mind waiting a moment, sir?”
Langton gave up his coat and hat and waited in the hallway while the butler disappeared. Music spilled from open doors. A crystal electrolier scattered shards of blue-white light. The air, warmed by the
latest central heating radiators, carried the odors of floral perfumes and cigar smoke. Two ladies in fine gowns, one of yellow, the other of cerise, came down the stairs giggling and whispering to each other; they nodded to Langton as they passed. He gave a little bow in return and hid the splinter of pain inside; the carefree young women couldn’t know of the memories they had set free.
A door opened to reveal Professor Caldwell Chivers. “My dear Inspector. Welcome.”
“I hope I’m not intruding.”
“Not at all, sir, not at all.” The Professor pumped Langton’s hands and noticed the fresh bandage. “What’s this? Nothing serious, I hope.”
“Just a scrape.” Langton followed the Professor down the hall. “You seem to have a full house.”
“Indeed we have. I invited the most important members of Liverpool society here to celebrate the inauguration of the Span.” The Professor smiled as he threw open the wide double doors and said, “Although my definition of importance might not correspond with my peers’ opinions.”
In the main drawing room, Langton saw perhaps thirty people milling among the dark furniture, admiring the modern art on the walls, chatting in clusters. The men in evening dress, the women in pastel gowns and shawls. Young, middle-aged, old.
“I’ll introduce you to a few of my guests,” the Professor said, guiding Langton by the arm. “I don’t want to throw a host of names at you. Ah, this is Jefferson, one of our leading poets—you might have read his tribute to the Span. Jefferson, Inspector Langton of the Liverpool police.”
A nod from a cadaverous man with a monocle.
“And this is MacIver, one of the chief engineers working on the Span.”
A brief, knuckle-crunching handshake from a squat man with bristling red hair and side whiskers.
“And this is…”
Despite the Professor’s promise, the faces and names came one after the other, a flurry of greetings and handshakes. Engineers, doctors, painters, academics, scientists, writers, atomicists, musicians, actors: The Professor had eclectic tastes.
When one of the newly introduced guests began talking with the Professor, Langton took the opportunity to break away and find a glass of wine. A maid passed with a tray of glasses. “Vouvray, sir.”
Langton had taken no more than a sip when a voice sounded close behind him. “I see you had the whirlwind tour.”
He turned. “Sister Wright.”
She returned his smile. “The Professor sometimes forgets that we mere mortals aren’t as quick as he. Like an enthusiastic child, he wants to be everywhere and talking to everyone at once.”
A good comparison, Langton realized as he watched the Professor dart from group to group, from conversation to conversation. As Langton’s gaze returned to Sister Wright, he took in her long gown of palest blue, her arms and slender neck free of jewelry save for the crucifix on its chain and the silver Guild pin at her breast. Unlike most of the women’s gowns, her dress covered the skin between her bosom and her throat. Someone had coiled her long hair up in a complicated plait.
She began to blush. “It’s too much, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m not used to…to clothes like this, but I knew I should make an effort for the Professor.” The blush deepened. “A friend in the Infirmary offered to help me, but I think she went too far.”
Langton said, “Not at all. You look beautiful.”
Realizing what he had said, he took a gulp of wine and coughed.
“Are you all right?” Sister Wright patted his back.
He swallowed hard. “I’m not used to alcohol anymore.”
“Nor I to compliments,” Sister Wright said. Then she took his free hand and turned it over in her own. “Who tied these fresh bandages?”
“My maid, Elsie.”
“She did well.”
For a moment, with his hand clasped in hers, Langton didn’t know what to say.
Sister Wright helped him. She collected her shawl and said, “It’s a little warm in here. Shall we go out onto the terrace?”
He followed her through another room, larger than the drawing room although still crowded with guests, and out onto a stone-flagged terrace. By the light of electric lanterns suspended from trellises, he could see the outline of a neat lawn beneath the snow, and shrubs and trees that merged into gradual darkness and yellow fog. The smell of damp earth and bark.
“The Professor knows many people,” Langton said.
“He has numerous interests and a keen curiosity. He craves knowledge.”
“Of what?”
“Of life itself,” Sister Wright said, glancing back to the crowded rooms. “All those people in there, the artists and scientists and experts, the Professor can hold detailed conversations with all of them. He is an avid collector of people and facts.”
That word troubled Langton. “Collectors tend to focus on one field, one interest. Sometimes obsessively, in my experience.”
“Not the Professor. His specialty is…everything.” As she said this, Sister Wright spread one arm wide as if to encompass the garden, the city, the whole world waiting beyond the seeping fog. Light from the French windows caught the silver pin at her breast.
“The Guild must take up much of your time,” Langton said.
She glanced down at the pin. “You recognize it?”
“I saw its companion on the uniform of another: Nurse Milne at the encampment.”
“I know her well, a good and hardworking girl.” A moment’s hesitation, then, “Your work took you to the camp?”
“I had reports of a fugitive.”
“In connection with Kepler?”
“His colleague. Perhaps also his accomplice.”
“I hope you found him.”
Langton looked away. “Unfortunately not. I would be surprised to see him again.”
“He perished?”
“He escaped into the network of tunnels beneath the Pier Head. Those at the camp doubted he would survive.”
Sister Wright shivered. “I’m sure they are correct. I have heard stories—hopefully fanciful—of those tunnels. Foul and dark, home to pests and insects and vermin, yet still attractive to certain people who prefer to avoid the light of day.”
Langton wondered if she had heard the ghost stories hinted at by Mr. Dowden. She did not seem a superstitious sort, and the Infirmary no doubt kept her firmly grounded in reality.
Sister Wright continued, “The thought of that confined space, all those tons of earth pressing down…I abhor confinement, Inspector. I hate to see anything trapped.”
“Is that why you keep an empty cage in your office at the Infirmary?”
“You noticed that?” Then, before Langton spoke, she continued, “It belonged to my predecessor, a fine nursing sister who nevertheless insisted on keeping a caged songbird nearby. When she left, I immediately released the poor creature and watched it fly above Liverpool’s rooftops. I kept the cage as a reminder.”
In all that Sister Wright said, Langton detected a fine sensibility, an empathy that touched him and reminded him of Sarah.
“Nurse Milne mentioned that you regularly help the camp’s inhabitants,” Langton said.
“When I can, Inspector. And they do need our help. Undernourished, cold and neglected, many of them rely on charity to survive.”
Looking through the glass to the warm, privileged world inside the mansion, Langton said, “So very different from all this.”
“I would not take you for a socialist reformer, Inspector.”
He met her gaze. “I’m not. I simply acknowledge the difference
between the fortunate families at the top of society and those at the base.”
“Some do not even see that,” she said. “I’m glad that you are not one of them. We have a duty to the less fortunate, the poor and the forgotten.”
“Does the Professor feel the same way?” Langton said, choosing his words carefully because of his uncertain ground. “Is that why he operated on some of the camp’s patients?”
Sister Wright thought for a moment, looking out at the garden. “I believe he sees his duty and responsibility now. It was not always so. The medical profession is rife with arrogance, the hubris of men from good families and privileged backgrounds, men who hold life and death in their hands every day. I may be guilty of pride myself when I say that perhaps I influenced the Professor for the better.”
Langton could easily imagine Sister Wright as a benign influence on the Professor. A constant presence, calm and sympathetic, leading by her own example. Her next sentence confirmed this humility.
“I admit that I feel a fraud,” she said, drawing her shawl around her shoulders.
“In what way?”
“Oh, this dress, my hair, being here at all. To be honest, I’d feel more at home in my uniform. It’s a second skin to me.”
Langton agreed. His clothes defined him, just as Sister Wright’s uniform defined her. He said, “I was never comfortable at parties or dinners, especially in evening dress; I always felt like an actor playing a part. But Sarah…”
A moment’s pause, then, “Your wife?”
“She grew up in houses like this, with parties, balls, receptions. Her family expected it of her.”
Sister Wright touched his arm. “I don’t wish to pry.”
“You aren’t prying,” Langton said, surprised at how easy he felt in her company. For the first time in months, he actually
wanted
to talk.
“Sarah used to tell me stories about the parties she’d attended, about the little tricks she and her friends knew to avoid chaperones and guardians, or to steal a taste of wine as a young girl. I’d always thought of the richer families as staid, hidebound, but Sarah opened my eyes. She never had an ounce of snobbery or disdain in her body. She thought nothing of marrying beneath her.”