Sherlock Holmes Page 21

The two men were sitting in a private booth in the drawing room of Newbury’s club, the White Friar’s. Over the years Newbury had come to consider the place a second home, enjoying the general ambience and the intelligent banter he often overheard in the bar. The clientele was mostly composed of artists, poets and writers, and although he knew Bainbridge didn’t approve of this more bohemian of crowds, Newbury often insisted on meeting him there. It was good, he assured himself, for the older man’s soul. And besides, Bainbridge’s club was generally full of policemen; useful, perhaps, when one needed such things, but hardly a haven away from the busy matters of everyday life.

  Bainbridge gave a heavy sigh. “Darn near exhausted, Newbury, if truth be told. That’s how I am. This Moyer case is taking everything I’ve got.”

  Newbury gave a resigned smile. Bainbridge had been tracking a killer for weeks, a surgeon by the name of Algernon Moyer, who had – for reasons that appeared to be politically motivated – taken to abducting politicians and minor royals, chaining them up in abandoned houses and infecting them with the Revenant plague. He would then move on, disappearing into the great wash of the city, leaving his victims to slowly starve to death as the plague took hold and they degenerated into slavering, half-dead monsters.

  Three days following each of the abductions, a letter had turned up at the Yard, addressed to Bainbridge, teasing him with the location of the most recent crime. By the time Bainbridge got there, of course, it was already too late. The victims would be beyond saving, reduced to nothing but chattering, snarling animals, straining at their chains as they tried desperately to get at the soft, pink flesh of their rescuers. Every one of them had been put down, electrocuted, their corpses burned in the immense plague furnaces at Battersea or dumped far out at sea along with the mounting heaps of bodies from the slums. Bainbridge hadn’t even been able to let the victims’ families identify the bodies.

  There had been four victims to date, and the police expected another to turn up any day. And, as Bainbridge had continued to bemoan, they were no closer to finding Moyer or uncovering the criteria by which he selected his victims. He struck without warning, abducting them in broad daylight, no obvious connections between them. It was a campaign of terror, and politicians and councillors were increasingly growing wary of leaving the relative safety of their homes.

  Newbury echoed his friend’s sigh. “I wish I could help you, Charles. I really do. But this Arkwell thing – the Queen…” He trailed off. Bainbridge knew all too well what the Queen was like when she had a bit between her teeth.

  Bainbridge looked up from the bottom of his glass. A faint smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Ah. Well. That’s where I might just be able to help you, Newbury.”

  Newbury leaned forward, pushing his empty glass to one side. “Go on.”

  “One of our informants, a delightful little man named Smythe…” Bainbridge pronounced the man’s name as if he were describing a particularly venomous breed of snake “…Paterson Smythe. He’s a burglar and a fence, and not a very successful example of either. But he has a secondary trade in information, and that’s what makes him valuable to us.” He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Times, places, names. You know the sort of thing.”

  Newbury nodded. “He doesn’t sound the type to be involved with a woman of Lady Arkwell’s calibre.”

  Bainbridge laughed. “Well, precisely. It looks like he might have gone and gotten himself in over his head. He turned up at the Yard this morning claiming he had something big for us, but that he needed our protection.”

  Newbury raised an eyebrow. “And?”

  Bainbridge shrugged. “And it sounds as if it could be your Lady Arkwell. Smythe said he’d been doing some work for a woman, ‘a right smart ’un’, as he described her, sitting in Bloomsbury Square all night and reporting back to her the next morning to describe everything he’d seen.”

  Newbury frowned. “Interesting. Anything else?”

  “He said it had been going on for a week. No specific target or brief. Simply that she’d told him to note all the comings and goings in the area.”

  “A scoping job?”

  “Precisely that. Descriptions of everyone he saw, when they came in and out of their properties, what time the postman or milkman called. But nothing that might give away the actual target. It could be any one of those grand houses she’s interested in, for any reason.” Bainbridge frowned, tugging unconsciously at his moustache. “She’s clearly a clever one, Newbury. She hasn’t left us with much to go on, even after her hired help tried his best to sell her up the river.”

  “It’s already more than I’ve been able to ascertain so far,” replied Newbury. “Where do they meet? That would be a start.”

  Bainbridge shook his head. “As I said, she’s a clever one. They always meet in the back of a brougham. She picks him up at Bloomsbury Square and they drive around the city while he hands over all the information he’s gleaned. They always take a different route, and she always deposits him in a different street when they’re finished, leaving him with the cab fare home.”

  “Fascinating,” said Newbury, impressed. “Does he have a description of the woman?”

  “Only that she wears a black veil beneath a wide-brimmed, lilac hat, along with black lace gloves, so as not to be recognised. He says she dresses smartly in the current fashions, and is well spoken, with an educated, English accent. He does most of the talking, and she issues payment and instructions.” Bainbridge shrugged. “That’s it. That’s all we could get out of him.”

  Newbury sipped at his brandy while he mulled over his friend’s story. Was this the mysterious woman he’d been looking for? And if so, what was she up to? It seemed like an extraordinary effort to go to for a simple robbery. But then, perhaps there was more to it than that. Perhaps this was an invitation to dance.

  Bainbridge was looking at him expectantly. “Well? What would you have me do?”

  Newbury smiled. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” echoed Bainbridge, confounded. His moustache bristled as he tried to form his response. “Nothing!” he said again.

  “Precisely,” said Newbury. “Tell Smythe to continue just as he is. Tell him to keep reporting back to this woman on all of the comings and goings to the square, and to make a particular effort to ensure he offers accurate descriptions of all the people he sees.”

  “Is that all?” asked Bainbridge, clearly unimpressed. “I fail to see how that constitutes an effective plan.”

  “Not at all,” said Newbury. “I believe it’s time I offered to play Lady Arkwell at her own game.”

  “Stop being so bloody cryptic, would you, and spit it out.”

  Newbury laughed. “If she’s as clever as I believe her to be, Charles, she won’t have chosen a mealy-mouthed snitch like Smythe without reason. She has no intention of effecting a burglary in Bloomsbury Square. She’s doing all of this to announce herself to us – to me. She knew full well that Smythe would go running to the Yard. It’s an invitation.”

  “An invitation?” asked Bainbridge. He looked utterly perplexed. “Indeed. An invitation to respond.”

  Bainbridge shook his head. “If you’re right – and I am not yet convinced that you are – what will you do?”

  “Show myself in Bloomsbury Square. Smythe will do the rest,” replied Newbury, with a grin. “And then we shall see what move she makes next.”

  “Good Lord,” said Bainbridge, draining the last of his brandy. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  “Oh yes,” said Newbury, laughing. “Absolutely.”

  VI

  Was it possible? Could he have somehow been driven to kill the woman?

  Newbury considered the facts. He’d boarded the ground train while trailing the female agent known as Lady Arkwell, the woman who was now dead from a knife wound to the throat. She’d taken a seat at the rear of the carriage, and so, trying to at least make the pretence of conspicuousness, he’d gone to the front on the opposite
side, where he’d been able to keep an eye on her reflection in the window glass. The train had started off, rumbling down Oxford Street, and he’d settled back into his seat, content that he had until at least the next stop before he’d have to make a move.

  Despite the fuzziness still clouding his thoughts, he was able to recall at least that much.

  The next thing he remembered was waking up with a thick head, Clarissa’s hand on his cheek, his jacket covered in blood. Now, additionally, he’d discovered he had a bloodied knife in his pocket. He had no notion of what might have occurred in the intervening time.

  He supposed there were two possibilities. Firstly, that he’d been forced to end the woman’s life during the aftermath of the accident, before he received the blow to his head that had rendered him unconscious and affected his recollection. Secondly, that the killer had taken advantage of his dazed state to plant the weapon on him, thereby making an attempt to implicate him in the murder.

  Despite the apparent outlandishness of the notion, he decided the latter was the most likely option. He was, after all, dealing with assassins and spies, people who might have recognised him and decided he’d make a viable scapegoat to cover their tracks.

  Newbury searched the faces of the other people in the carriage. There were at least twenty of them, still huddled in little groups on the floor. None of them seemed familiar. A dark-haired young man with a beard was slumped to one side by himself. His black suit was torn and he was bleeding from a wound in his left forearm. He was watching Newbury intently. Could it be him? Or perhaps the middle-aged man at the other end of the carriage, squatting close to where Newbury had been sitting. He was whispering now to two young women, but his eyes were tracing every one of Newbury’s movements, his rugged features fixed in a grim expression.

  It was useless to speculate. It could have been any one of the other passengers. He’d have to wait to see if they’d give themselves away. There was nothing else for it.

  Newbury rubbed his palm over the back of his neck, wishing the fuzziness in his head would clear. He could feel no lump, no tender spot where he had bashed it during the accident. Why, then, did he still feel so sluggish, so groggy? It was almost as if…

  A thought struck him. Perhaps he hadn’t banged his head at all. If someone really was attempting to frame him for Lady Arkwell’s murder, he might have been drugged. A quick prick with a needle while he was down, a dose of sedative to keep him under, to keep him slow. That had to be it. It was the only explanation for why he was feeling like this. Perhaps the killer had been carrying it in his pocket, intending to use it to incapacitate Lady Arkwell when she alighted from the train. The crash had provided him with a different opportunity, and he’d discharged the syringe into Newbury instead, while everyone else on board was still distracted in the midst of the initial panic and confusion.

  It all seemed to make a terrible kind of sense to Newbury, but even so, it brought him no closer to identifying the killer, and at present, he had no way of proving any of it. All he knew for sure was that someone on the train was out to get him, or at the very least, was using him to protect their secret.

  “Do you think anyone will notice?” whispered Clarissa from beside him.

  He glanced round. She’d done an admirable job. The body might have been a heap of clothes, spilt from a burst case. “Not until we draw their attention to it,” he replied, “or one of them comes looking for their coat.”

  Clarissa gave a wry smile. “I’m scared, Sir Maurice. I keep thinking that no one’s going to come and find us and we’ll remain trapped in here, with someone capable of… that.” She put her hand on his chest, and, throwing propriety to the wind, he put his arm around her shoulders and drew her in. They stood there for a moment, holding on to one another as if they were the only still point in the universe.

  “It’ll be alright,” he said, with as reassuring a tone as he could muster. But what he really meant to say was: “I’m scared too.”

  VII

  “Sir Maurice Newbury, I presume?”

  The voice was cultured and luxurious, like the purr of a well-mannered cat.

  Newbury peeled open his eyes, but for a moment saw nothing but darkness. Then, slowly, shapes began to resolve out of the gloom, as if the shadows themselves were somehow coalescing, taking on physical form.

  Around him, figures lay supine on low couches, draped across the daybeds as if they had given themselves up to the deepest of sleeps. Their pale faces might have belonged to spirits or wraiths rather than men; ghostly and lost, these waifs, like Newbury, were adrift on the murky oceans of their own minds.

  Gas lamps, turned down low, cast everything in a dim, orange glow.

  Newbury turned his head marginally in order to take in the appearance of the man who had spoken. It wasn’t a face he recognised. The man was Chinese, in the later years of his life – judging by his wizened, careworn appearance – and was standing politely to one side, his hands clasped behind his back. He was dressed in a fine silk robe and wore an elaborate moustache that curled immaculately around his thin lips, draping solemnly from his chin. His eyes were narrowed as he regarded Newbury through the haze of opium smoke.

  Newbury blinked and tried to stir himself, but the drug continued to exert its influence. He couldn’t even find the motivation to move. “You presume correctly, sir,” he replied, his voice a deep slur. “Of whom do I have the pleasure?”

  The other man smiled for the briefest of moments, before swiftly regaining his composure. “My name, sir, is Meng Li.”

  “Meng Li?” echoed Newbury, unable to contain his surprise. He’d heard the name a hundred times before, always spoken in whispered tones, even amongst the upper echelons of Scotland Yard.

  Meng Li was perhaps the most significant of the Chinese gang lords to exert his influence on the British Empire. His network stretched from Hong Kong to Vancouver, from Burma to London itself, and was considered to take in everything from the opium trade to people trafficking, and most other illicit trades besides.

  That he should be there in the capital was barely conceivable, let alone consorting openly with a British agent in such insalubrious surroundings. This was, after all, a filthy opium den in Soho – about as far from the Ritz as one could imagine. Clearly, Newbury decided, whatever reason Meng Li had for being there, it must have been of grave importance. The Chinaman was putting himself at great risk.

  He mustn’t have been alone. Newbury craned his neck. He couldn’t see any bodyguards, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. For all he knew, half of the patrons of the house might be in Meng Li’s employ, ready to leap up from their apparent stupors if Newbury tried anything.

  Not, he supposed, that there was any risk of that. Meng Li had timed his appearance to perfection, approaching Newbury while he was still incapacitated from the drug, but cognisant enough to hold a meaningful conversation.

  The Queen would be furious if she discovered Newbury had been face to face with the crime lord and hadn’t killed him on sight, but he was presently far from capable of that, and besides, he was curious to see what the man wanted, why Meng Li would risk his life in such a manner to speak with one of Victoria’s agents.

  “You do me a great honour,” said Newbury, without a hint of irony.

  Again, that subtle smile. “I hope that we may – temporarily, at least – speak as friends, Sir Maurice?”

  “Friends?” echoed Newbury. Was this to be a proposition? He would have to tread carefully.

  Meng Li gave a slight bow of his head, as if conceding some unspoken point. “If not as friends, then perhaps at least as men of a common purpose, who share a common enemy?”

  Newbury raised an eyebrow. “Go on,” he said, intrigued.

  “The operative known as ‘Lady Arkwell’. You seek her, do you not, for your English Queen?” The words were wrapped in amusement, not scorn.

  Newbury considered his response. Meng Li was obviously well connected, and dangerous, too. Any de
nial would be seen for the blatant lie that it was, and he didn’t wish to anger the man, particularly given his present situation. “Indeed I do,” he said, levelly. “I take it, then, that you also have an interest in finding this mysterious woman.”

  “In a manner of speaking,” said Meng Li. “She has taken something that belongs to me, and for that, I owe her a response.”

  “Ah,” said Newbury, “and so you’re proposing an alliance in order to find her?”

  Meng Li shook his head. The gesture was almost imperceptible in the dim light. “I wish only to impart to you some information,” he replied.

  Newbury frowned. More games. “I’m listening.”

  “It is said that Lady Arkwell is an expert at covering her tracks. She passes like a leaf, blown on the wind, and is soon lost amongst the many others that have fallen from the tree. She never repeats herself, and she never returns to the same place twice.” He folded his hands together inside the sleeves of his cheongsam. “She has, however, one weakness – her fondness for a particular blend of tea. It is a Yunnan leaf, grown in China, and is found in only one establishment in this great city of London. A tearoom on New Bond Street known as the ‘Ladies’ Own Tea Association’.” He withdrew his hands from his sleeves. In one of them he held a small, white card, which he handed to Newbury.

  “And you believe she will be found there?” asked Newbury, surprised.

  Meng Li inclined his head. “What is more, you may identify her by means of an old injury. Two years ago, a bullet was lodged in her right knee during an incident in Singapore. The bullet was removed, but the knee was damaged. The affliction is barely noticeable, but alters her gait: every third step she takes is uneven.”

  “Then why tell me?” asked Newbury. “If you know all of this, why not send a handful of your own men after her?”

  “Because it amuses me,” replied Meng Li, although this time, his smile did not reach his eyes. Newbury had heard others call this man inscrutable, but to his mind, that was simple ignorance. Meng Li was not so hard to read, and although he hid it well, Newbury could see the truth in the man’s expression: he was scared. When Meng Li spoke of Lady Arkwell, he had the look about him of a man who knew he was outclassed. He was aiding Newbury because he did not wish to engage the woman in her own games, for fear he might lose. The crime lord, it seemed, was nothing if not a pragmatist.