Beautiful Freaks (10 page)

5

EVIDENCE

Steptree liked
Inspector David Chester very much. Their
shared work on the White
Chapel murders
in his early days had drawn them into a close and lasting friendship -- in a way that the only
survivors of a tragedy
are pulled together by the tight bonds of a horrific experience.

It had been a bitter winter and a bitter time. Nobody else understood
the nightmares they had suffered and Steptree knew that Chester was the only man who truly knew the inside of his soul. Chester had an edge of roughness
, more like a dockworker than a man of education.
The solid frame of his body and his shaved head didn’t help this impression. He
spoke coarsely
,
and with a certain phlegmatic cough that rocked through his barrel-body like a small cannon discharging.

However, despite all this, Steptree had never met anybody qui
cker in mind than David Chester – which
is why
Chester’s choice of
company
came as a surprise to
him. He was not the kind of fellow you imagined being interested by the occult, or indeed anything particularly spiritual. He was a man of earth and common sense.

Professor
Heartlock
had a certain reputation amongst academic circles
;
o
ne which had
led
to his nickname
, The
Witch
finder
General. It was a name meant to mock.
Heartlock
was a believer in the occult – although not a follower. He had dedicated his entire life to chasing the shadows of myth and destroying evil wherever he saw it. Some hailed him a hero. Steptree was not one of them. From
the
little he knew of
Heartlock,
he thought him to be a suspicious old fool.

That was bef
ore the events of the last week.
Before the unreal had become real. Now, after witnessing two of the most extraordinary deaths Steptree thought imaginable, he was pre
pared to at least listen to T
he Witch
finder
with half
an
ear of curiosity
,
even if the other still belonged to that of a cynic.

Before Chester
had led
his reluctant guest to the wealthy suburbs of Bloomsbury,
they
had
visited the morgue. It was a
pitiful and bleak place on the outskirts of Cheapside
. It was a sad place for a human
to end his time
.

The police
officers
had transported the
tree
trunk and laid it out on the metal
-
topped table. It made a strange corpse.
They had cut it down to a span of just
over ten foot long, to allow for even the tallest of men. Amongst Steptree’s horrified fascination, his dark humour nestled. He smile
d
as
he
thought on
the efficiency of being swallowed by your own coffin.

If Chester saw this moment of impropriety he did not comment. Instead he ordered the police doctor to hand over his stethoscope. Walking up to the tree trunk with a sense of calm proficiency he leant over, tapped the trunk
,
and bent forward to listen to any signs of life. Satisfied that there was no lingering heartbeat, Chester instructed his young assis
tant to retrieve the small wood-axe
and split it open.

Steptree was a man of science
,
a
man of reason. Twice in one week he had been forced against his will to look upon something he dared not
believe.
It was as if he was standing on the precipice of a chaotic universe and the notion terrified him.

“Are you sure that this is correct procedure,
Sir?
”
Phillips asked.

“Damn your procedure, m
an. There ain’t
no
procedure
for the work of the D
evil.” His la
ugh was cut short by his cannon-rattle
cough.

Steptree raised his shoulders
in a shrug
,
which communicated a hundred different emotions.

Three thwacks of the axe were all it took to splinter open the macabre coffin. A dark, black pool of blood sprang up through the crack
.

“Darned idiot!
I wanted the tree
split,
not the bloody cadaver.”

“S…sorry, Sir,”
Phillips
stuttered.

“Just get him out.”

It wasn’t an easy task but after half an hour the man and the tree were
mostly separate
.

Steptree
was
pulled to the body with an almost childlike curiosity. Aside from the cut
that
had been made by the over
-
excited axe, the body was intact. The face of the man was locked in the look of terror. It had been a slow death. The man could easily have died of fear if the lack of air had not got him first.

The man was a
gentleman. His dress suggested
he was ready for an evening out
in one of the more upmarket areas of town
. It was the dress of a man who was perhaps a little too sure of
himself
, Steptree thought. Several rings laced his fingers
,
and his moustache was styled rather flamboyantly. Steptree used the tip of his pen to push
open the man’s jacket and noticed a
thick
,
cream calling card
tucked into his inside pocket. He
pulled it out and took it over to the gas-lamp.

The card was quality, e
xpensive to produce. Instinctively Steptree knew he had just found a key piece of evidence.

EVANGELINE’S

PALACE OF BEAUTIFUL FREAKS.

Smoking Club, Dining Rooms & Exhibition.

Doors open at nightfall.

Strictly Members Only.

He called Chester over and showed him the card. “
May I take this?
I’ll return it tomorrow.”

“Certainly
, j
ust don’t lose it.”

“Have you heard of this place?”
Steptree asked, his eyebrow rose in curiosity.

“It’s not my scene,” Chester replied.

“No, I suppose not.”

Steptree placed the card between the pages of his black moleskin notebook and snapped it shut before returning it to his own inside pocket.

Whilst Chester did a concluding circuit around the body, he mumbled,
“There isn’t much more we’re going to find out from this one. It’s as
we were
told, the
tree
seemed to just
swallow
the
man – as
if it just magically opened up and
ate him
. There’s only one way to describe an event like that … Witchcraft.”
He
took out his pipe and
puffed
on the tiny glowing embers
, drawing it back into life
. Steptree wondered fleetingly how Chester
had not yet managed to set his trousers on fire.

“We
ll, in that case – supper with T
he Witch Finder
General sounds just the ticket,
” Steptree’s tone was thick with sarcasm. As Chester led the way out to the waiting cab, he clapped Steptree roughly on the arm and let out one of his wonderful Chester laughs.

*

Hastings was the one childhood holiday Kaspian could remember. Heartlock had sent him to stay with his sister, Aggie, whilst he’d been in Europe on ‘business.’ Kaspian’s stay in Hastings had been one of the best times of his life. Aunt Aggie had had several children, a whole flock of them so it had seemed – she had no room for a study, or a husband; he had died over a gambling dispute. Fortunately it was over a game he’d won, and so Heartlock’s sister was left with a fine fortune.

The three months Kaspian stayed with Aunt Aggie had made him realise what it was to be a child. He’d spent his days playing on the beach with his ‘cousins,’ fished for mackerel and crabs, annoyed the man operating the funicular, and spent all his pocket money in the penny arcades.

Aunt Aggie had died soon after Kaspian had returned to London. She fell down the stairs as she was carrying the laundry. It was a very ordinary end to an extraordinary woman. All her children went to live with Heartlock’s other sister, Mary; a very Christian spinster who believed fun was an unnecessary indulgence. It had made Kaspian sad to think of the change in his cousins’ lives.

At this time of the year, Hastings was quiet. The penny arcades were shut for the winter. Because of the raging storms that had hit the coast over the last week, even the fishing shacks were empty.
Kaspian
walked along the beach, the pebbles crunching under his city shoes. He sat down,
looked out over the ocean. He made
a lonely figure
. His black morning suit made him look like a silhouette; a black inky
mark, like an exclamation mark on grey paper.  E
verything
here was grey;
the sand, the sea, the sky. Gulls squawked as they swirled on the thermals. The warm air from the land was hitting the cold air of the sky and it caused the rain to fall thick and heavy. Kaspian did not mind it. He was lost somewhere in the idea of who he was.

Rain channelled off his black cur
ls and slid over his high cheek
bones. Against the pale whiteness of his skin
,
it almost looked like a string of pearls. His lips were blue from the cold
,
and
with a passing thought,
he noted how he was shivering
.
There were so many questions and so few answers
– and h
e’d known – Heartlock had known all of this time. Suddenly the irony of his guardian’s name seemed so funny that Kaspian
fell
int
o the sand in a fit of giggles that soon
turned to sobs.

It’s what boys do – they cry
when they think they are alone – when there’
s no witness to their shame. But he wasn’t alone. She was there, s
tanding on the cliff-
top looking down at the exquisite little phantom through the lens of a camera.

She leant forward,
with
her ‘good’ eye pressed against the viewer,
and looked
down the channel of black le
ather at the small glass lens
. Kaspian was caught at the centre of her tiny upside down world, like a fly spinning in a spider’s web. The shutter fell, burning him into the celluloid.

By the time she’
d pulled back, replaced her monocle and looked back to the beach, he had vanished. She recovered her noteboo
k from one of the pockets hidden
in the voluminous silk of her skirt. She li
c
ked the nib of the pen, loosening the ink before writing down the time and date, which she read from her pocket watch
contraption
. She wore it in the fashion of a gentleman, the same way her father had. 

She folded the concertina camera back into its wooden box, snapped shut the brass latches
,
and grabbed it by the handle before striding over the fields towards the train station. She would be back in London within
two hours
. It would be just in time for supper at Rules. 

6

SUPPERTIME

Kaspian’s trip away had gone unnoticed. Heartlock had spent most of the day in his study working on an article for a small periodical
that
still viewed his expertise to be of some value. When Kaspian wandered into the study, brushing away the last few
tell-tale
signs of
beach
as he went, Heartlock did not raise his head from his papers but did at least show the manners to enquire after Kaspian’s day.

“Have you had a good day, Kaspian?”

“Yes, Sir.
A fine day.
I took a turn out in the air.”

“Anything of interest in the world?”

“Not much, Sir.
The usual;
s
ome scandal in parliament about one of the MPs
being discovered with his
mistress
,
and some gossip about the
White Chapel Murders.
There’s a rumour on the streets that it is
starting again.”