Langton started, and almost looked around as if expecting to see Jake lurch from the shadows.
Sister Wright continued, “It seems so long ago, that first crude
attempt I witnessed with Klaustus: He stored a soldier’s essence for an hour while the poor man’s lacerated body effectively died. Klaustus repaired the damage and restarted the heart with an electric shock, then transferred the essence back into the host. I saw it myself. Although the poor ruined soldier later told me he wished he had passed away on the table, the procedure itself worked.”
Procedure. Host. Essence.
Calm, ordered words disguising absolute madness.
“Jake was not the first,” Sister Wright said. “I know of three people in Liverpool who walk and live and laugh, giving no signs that they once inhabited other bodies. So many die too early, unnecessarily, unfairly.”
Langton stared at her. He wanted to make her stop, but her intense gaze pinned him down like an Indian mongoose with a snake. He didn’t have the energy or the courage to argue with her.
“I can bring her back to you, Langton. Not just for a few days or weeks or months. For a lifetime.”
He managed to whisper, “No.”
Sister Wright leaned forward. “Think of it: your wife, alive again, to hold and touch. In your arms. You could hear her voice—”
“It wouldn’t be her voice.”
“It would be
her
speaking. You would know. You could look inside the eyes of her new…host, and know. It’s within your reach.”
“And where would you find this poor host?” he said. “Murder some poor girl? Compound Sarah’s death with another crime?”
“There would be no need.” Sister Wright looked away. “The Infirmary has a ward that most people never visit. Patients who will never see the outside world again; patients whose wits have left them. Although physically sound, they stare at the world like poor dumb animals. There is nothing inside. Whether through injury, through disease or dementia, they will forever be no more than vessels. Imperfect, empty vessels.”
Her words spiraled around inside Langton’s head. He curled up on himself, wanting to disappear, to hear no more. The image of Sarah’s body lying in its silk-lined coffin would not leave him.
It wasn’t fair; it wasn’t right. She had been too young. They’d had their whole lives to live.
Still, Sister Wright continued, her voice soft and steady: “Inside the jar, her essence will fade. The particles lose their energy. Eventually, they cease. There is nothing I—or anyone else on this earth—can do then. It will be too late.”
Langton shook his head. He forced out the words, “It’s not right.”
She touched his knee. “Not right? Is it right for an innocent young woman to lie gently rotting in a wooden box while her family grieves?”
“Please…”
“Is it right for fate to choose
her
rather than the old, the already sick, the criminal, and the insane? You know it isn’t.”
“But…” Langton struggled for arguments. He remembered the crucifix around Sister Wright’s neck. “You believe in God; how can you do this?”
She rested a finger against Langton’s forehead. “Because God gave us intelligence. He gave us knowledge. It is our choice how we use that knowledge. I see no contradiction. Our work bolsters faith in God, since we can now prove the existence of the soul. There is no need for us to continue the use of jars save as temporary refuges. Until a new host comes forward.”
Exhaustion drained Langton. He couldn’t fight her. Was she insane? Or did she speak the truth?
To hold Sarah again. To relieve the utter loneliness, the guilt and pain. To live again.
“I’m a policeman.”
Sister Wright smiled as if she knew she’d won. “You’re also a husband. And your wife needs you. Will you let her down?”
Langton stared into the fire a few moments, then sat straighter on
the couch. He smoothed the front of his waistcoat and let out a breath. “What do you want of me?”
“Nothing,” Sister Wright said. “Simply nothing.”
“But—”
“Leave Kepler’s death unsolved,” Sister Wright said, rising and crossing the room to a bureau. “Go through the motions of the inquiry but no more.”
“You killed him.”
“I did, and I would do it again.”
“Why?”
“Because as well as being an Irregular, he discovered certain…Let us say he unearthed too much.”
“About the jars?”
“Perhaps.”
“Then why did you cut off his face?” Langton asked.
“Publicity and distraction,” said Sister Wright. “I had to misdirect attention toward Brother Boer. In the Transvaal, as you know, they did that to their own traitors. And I wanted the British public to remember what such men were capable of.”
Before Langton could continue, Sister Wright returned from the bureau with the Webley in her hand. She held it out to him.
Langton checked the revolver. Every chamber loaded. He rested it across his knee. “I could arrest you. I should arrest you. And not just for Kepler’s murder.”
“I know.” She stood there with her hands crossed in front of her nurse’s apron.
“Then why give this back to me?”
“Because I trust you.”
Because I’m an accomplice now,
Langton thought. He stared down at the gun.
If I do Sister Wright’s bidding, I might see Sarah again. Or some re-created version of her. Oh God, forgive me.
He pocketed the Webley and stood up.
“You must deflect Major Fallows from me, from our network,” Sister Wright said, and the way she said “our” made Langton wince.
“You know about Fallows?”
“I do. I don’t want him interfering in our work.”
Langton nodded. “I’ll do what I can.”
She rested a hand on his arm for a moment. “I know you will. And I will fulfill my part of the contract. I promise.”
Sister Wright led the way down through the echoing warehouse. On the ground floor, the smell of tobacco drifted from a side room. Langton looked inside and saw three men, two at a table, one lying on a camp bed reading a yellowback novel. Smoke drifted around the bare bulb. As the men at the table saw Sister Wright, they threw down their cards and jumped to their feet.
Sister Wright waved them down. “It’s all right. I’ll see the inspector to the door myself. Where’s Jake?”
“Here, Doctor.”
Langton turned at the deep voice and saw Reefer Jake standing behind him and Sister Wright. The stocky man had made no sound as he’d approached. Langton looked into his eyes and tried to see some sign of the man he’d interrogated in the cells. He saw a brief spark before Jake’s impassive features turned to Sister Wright.
“Inspector Langton has agreed to help us, gentlemen,” she said. “Make sure you look out for him again.”
“Again?” Langton said.
Sister Wright smiled. “My boys here have saved your life at least once. With Redfers’s investigation, you got too close to the criminal jar gangs, or what was left of them. They wanted you removed.”
“Then I suppose I should thank you,” Langton said, but he wondered why Sister Wright had kept him alive then. Had she already accounted for his complicity?
With Jake lumbering after them, she led Langton down to a heavy wooden door bound with iron. “Jake could drive you home.”
“I’d like to walk,” Langton said, reluctant to be the passenger of a man he’d so recently pronounced dead.
The door swung open to allow in the rich, sour smell of the Mersey. Langton stepped out onto a wooden pier and saw the lights of Birkenhead and New Brighton flickering on the opposite shore of the river. In the darkness, warehouses showed as blocky silhouettes against the stars.
“Go left,” Sister Wright said, “and you’ll find stone steps up to the street. Be careful.”
Langton didn’t know what to say in farewell.
Thank you? Go to hell?
He shook his head and made for the street.
“One final thing, Matthew.”
He turned and saw Sister Wright standing in the wedge of light thrown from the open door.
“Today is the day of the Span’s inauguration,” she said. “Do not attend.”
“Why not?”
“Please do as I ask. If you wish to see your wife again, keep away from the Span.”
Langton ran back, but the door slammed shut. He raised his fist to hammer on it, then drew back. Making for the steps up to the street, he tried to pin down all that he’d learned from Sister Wright, or Doktor Glass. Too much information. Too many surprises. One question stood above the others: Why warn him away from the Span?
A
S HE WALKED
along the Dock Road through encrusted snow, head down, left hand clutching his thin jacket closed, Langton tried to think logically, to order the barrage of information. He couldn’t make sense of Sister Wright’s plans; she’d involved herself in the trade of souls but implied that had ended. So why had she recently ordered the immense component from Irving and Long, as if for some enormous attractor? And why had she warned Langton away from the Span?
The few pedestrians on the streets—drunks, dockers, or men walking to workshops’ early shifts—stared at Langton as they passed by, and he wondered if he’d been talking to himself again. Hardly surprising, given all that had happened over the past few days. Enough to unhinge any man. His clothes reinforced the image of lunacy: torn and disheveled, with streaks of mud and what looked like blood.
Up ahead stood a tea wagon, warm light spilling from its interior. Langton crossed the street and leaned on the wooden counter. “Have you any coffee?”
“We got Italian or Dutch.”
“Italian, please. Very strong.”
As the fat proprietor turned to a gleaming brass percolator, Langton glanced at the workers beside him eating sandwiches and drinking from chipped mugs of tea and coffee. Had Sister Wright sent one of her crew to follow him? Could one of these men work for her? Perhaps it was that laborer over there, or the tilting drunk under that lamppost.
Langton gulped coffee and tried to silence his paranoia. It didn’t matter, in the end. He had no control over Sister Wright. The reverse, in fact: She owned him, at least for now, until they’d completed their transaction. And that realization brought images of Sarah. Alone, trapped, waiting. Wondering where she was and why nobody came to help her. Langton closed his eyes and clutched at the counter.
“Here, mate, are you all right? Had a drop too much last night?”
Langton forced a smile. “Just tired. Another coffee, please.”
Feeling more alert, Langton began to take note of his surroundings. Even here, where the royal party would probably never visit, bunting and streamers fluttered in the predawn breeze. The streets seemed cleaner than usual, without the heaped pyramids of horse dung. Today, the day of the inauguration, Fallows would no doubt already be at the Span to check any last-minute hitches.
Again, the Span. Would Sister Wright, or Doktor Glass, want to target the Queen? Surely not. She had spoken of hatred for the Boers, and her scars gave her reason enough, but Langton couldn’t think of any reason for her to hate the royal family. No, it had to be the Span. Jake had carried a complex key stamped with the bridge’s logo. Kepler and Durham had been connected to it. So why would Sister Wright target that great metal structure?
Langton looked south, along the Dock Road and over the roofs of factories and warehouses, to where the Span glowed in the darkness, its form picked out in electric arc lights. At the head of each tower, and all along the support pipes carrying the vertical steel cables, glowed
bright red dots, the sleepless eyes of electric lights set there to warn low-flying dirigible captains. The combination of lights, steel skeleton, and mist gave the Span an ethereal aura.
“How much do I owe you?”
“One and tuppence, mate.”
Trying not to look behind him, Langton continued along the Dock Road. He thought about hailing a hansom, but the walk and the coffee helped clear his head. He kept on walking, heading for home.
So many questions ran through his mind. Why had Kepler died? Because he’d gotten too close, Sister Wright said, but not necessarily to the jars. Kepler and Durham had been asking around the dockers’ pubs, looking for hints of a Boer plot. Could that be part of it? Had they stumbled upon another of Sister Wright’s—or Doktor Glass’s—activities there? Sister Wright would surely never help the Boers. It didn’t yet make sense.
One question returned: What had happened to Kepler’s face? What had Sister Wright done with the grisly object? Langton could not imagine her keeping it as a barbaric trophy, but then he had to accept that he did not really know her at all; she might be capable of anything if she felt threatened or if her conviction drove her to it. Langton only had to remember the fate of the criminal Jar Boy gangs and the reputation that Sister Wright—as Doktor Glass—enjoyed.
Sister Wright knew too much. She had known Langton’s movements, his discoveries and suspicions. And she had known about Fallows. Someone within headquarters kept her informed, obviously, but who? Harry? He had no access to Langton’s case files, other than quick glimpses of any left open on the desk. Forbes Paterson? No. Impossible. Langton had no illusion about the strength of Paterson’s feelings about the Jar Boys.
In his mind, Langton went through every officer who had access to his cases, however incidentally. By the time he reached Waterloo Road, he had to face the only logical conclusion: Sergeant McBride.
No one else had access to every fact. No one else had accompanied
Langton at every major junction in the investigations. And no one else enjoyed Langton’s absolute trust.
Anger flared inside Langton but quickly died. He stood at the railings overlooking Trafalgar Dock and watched a Royal Navy steamship slide into its berth under a dark sky streaked with pearl to the east. Langton had no right to blame McBride. Perhaps Sister Wright had made the sergeant a similar promise or offer; perhaps McBride had a loved one waiting among those shelves of jars.
Elsie. Langton remembered his instructions to McBride:
Go home and protect Elsie.
But if McBride really worked for Doktor Glass…