Lost and Gone Forever (6 page)

“Don’t you dare.” The judge slammed his fist against the table. “I’ve been patient with you, I’ve allowed you to speak to me as if . . . as if we were somehow equals, but don’t you dare question me or my motives.” He shook his finger at her. “You just watch your tone with me. Do you know who I am?”

To his surprise, Mrs Parker smiled again. And the longer she smiled, the bigger her smile became. The judge looked around for Mr Parker and was glad to see the man returning to the table. He stood and grabbed Mr Parker’s chair for him. His hands were trembling.

Mr Parker looked at them both and settled a hand on Mrs Parker’s arm. He shook his head and waited a moment before addressing her. “What has happened? Our host looks likely to piss himself.”

“I’ve been good,” Mrs Parker said. “I haven’t hurt him. We have been discussing the work we are to do.”

“Ah,” Mr Parker said. “Very well then.”

“And the . . . I’m sorry, what do you call yourself? Within your silly gentlemen’s club?”

“It’s not a . . .” The judge paused and wiped his face with a napkin. “It’s not a club. It’s a society. And I am the high judge because I am responsible for the final decisions as regards the ultimate fates of our subjects.” He raised his cup and sipped, trying to regain his composure.

“The judge, then,” Mrs Parker said. “The judge of the Karstphanomen. Isn’t that what you call yourselves? He has decided to pay us double our usual amount.”

“But that’s not . . .” The judge aspirated a mouthful of his tea and went through a brief coughing fit. The Parkers watched calmly. No
one around them seemed to notice or care. The elderly men had already left, and the waitstaff was nowhere to be seen. When he could breathe again, the judge continued. “I never,” he said. It was the best he could do. His throat burned now.

“You have brought the fee we asked for?”

“It’s here.” The judge pushed an envelope across the table, and Mr Parker made it disappear. “It’s all right there. The entire amount you said.”

“Good,” Mr Parker said.

“But this is sufficient for only one half of the job you require,” Mrs Parker said. “This is the amount you will pay us to find Jack the Ripper. And when we do, you must pay us the same amount again to kill him.”

“What?”

“We don’t care to solve international mysteries. It is not what we do. We do a single job, a job most people, for whatever reason, do not care to do for themselves. You ask us to find this person who is unfindable and then also to put an end to his doings, is that not right?”

“I thought you would—”

“There is no point in thinking about what we do,” Mrs Parker said. “You have asked us to do two things, so you should pay us two times. Is that not fair? You will pay us and we will do it and then you will sleep like the babies all night long, is it not so?”

“Mr Parker, surely you won’t allow your wife to speak to me—”

“If you haven’t noticed, Mr Carlyle, I don’t allow or disallow my wife anything. She tends to speak her own mind. Is that the phrase? And you are a lucky man if all she does is speak.”

They knew his name. His real name. Perhaps they knew more. Where he lived? The membership of the Karstphanomen? He took
a deep, shuddering breath and thought of Claire and the babies. Then he nodded.

“Good,” Mr Parker said. “Then it’s settled. Thank you very much for the tea and cakes. We’ll get on with our business now.”

Leland Carlyle, the high judge of the Karstphanomen, sat quietly as the killers left the coffeehouse. Carlyle averted his eyes as Mrs Parker walked away. Her trousers left little to the imagination. On their way out, Mr Parker gave the woman in the apron a coin. He smiled and nodded at her just as if he were a human being.

T
here was a small stack of books on the mantel, and Ambrose pointed to them. “That what you use for cigarette paper? Roll tobacco up in the pages and people get clever when they smoke the words?”

Day chuckled. “No, I don’t think I could do that.” He picked up the top book, blew a film of dust off the cover. “I like books. Do you know how to read, Ambrose?”

Ambrose shook his head. “I mean, I know a bit from the ragged school, but only barely enough. Books’r hard, and we didn’t need to know readin’ to make a living.”

“You should try again. You’re a clever lad, and reading’s easy once you’ve got the hang of it. You could go far with a little education. Do more with your life.”

“Like you? Sellin’ old leavings on the street?”

Day turned the book over and opened it to a random page.

“I’m sorry,” Ambrose said. “Didn’t mean nothin’ by what I said. What’s that book about?”

“I’ve read it before,” Day said. “It’s by Lear.”

“What’s that mean?”

“The author. Edward Lear. It’s a book of his poems. My . . . I knew a woman once who liked them. She wrote poetry, too.”

“Can’t figure the meaning in poems. Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Suit yourself,” Day said. “But these poems are funny. Do you know the alphabet?”

“Some. I know the shapes.”

“Here’s a nonsense alphabet. You might like that.”

“I appreciate the thought, guv, but I’m only smart about some things.”

Day sat on the sofa beside Ambrose. “Here,” he said, “do you know this letter?”

“Oh, I seen this before.” Ambrose pointed at a small illustration of a cat. “That letter means
cat
, and it means
cigar
, too. But it should mean
moon
, ’cause that’s what it looks like, right?”

“‘C was a cat who ran after a rat; but his courage did fail when she seized on his tail. Crafty old cat!’”

“That is a bit funny. That’s a way to go about teaching a thing. Make it so it’s not boring. Lemme see.” Ambrose took the book from Day and leafed through it. “That don’t look right, that picture.”

“Why not?”

“I mean, that letter looks all wrong to spell the word
shrubbery
. Ain’t what I remember.”

“Because that letter is a
Y
, and the illustration there is of a yew. A yew tree. ‘Y was a yew, which flourished and grew by a quiet abode near the side of a road. Dark little yew!”

“Dark little you?”

“Exactly right.”

W
e can’t turn him away,” Hatty said. “We can’t afford to.”

“What does . . .” But Hammersmith suddenly decided it wasn’t worth arguing with her. He closed his mouth and waved his hand at her, hoping she’d leave his office and go bother Eugenia instead.

She didn’t. “We have one client and we haven’t made progress in a year on that case, and he was your friend and I’m sorry, I’m truly sorry to put it so bluntly, but we need more clients and we need more work and I’m sure we need more money coming in.” She paused for breath, but before Hammersmith could say anything, she started again. “
I
need more work. I’m as good as any man at all this; I just need the chance to actually do something.”

Hammersmith waited to be sure she was finished. After a moment of strained silence, he nodded. “He was my friend. He
is
my friend. This agency, such as it is, exists for only one reason, and that’s to find Walter Day and return him to his family.”

“For all we know he’s dead.” Hatty’s eyes widened, and she
swallowed hard. “Oh, no, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. Sometimes I just talk and things come out that I didn’t ever intend.”

“No, you’re right. He may be dead.” Hammersmith looked away at the stacks of papers that dominated his office. “He may be.” He looked back up at her. “But we have no evidence that he is dead, and so we must assume that he’s alive and needs our help. And if he’s dead, if he’s really gone, then we need to find that out and settle the issue for Claire. She has four children, and the uncertainty is hard on her.”
It’s hard on all of us,
he thought.

“May I begin again in some way that isn’t so rude?”

“No, I understand your frustration and I appreciate your honesty. Just as I appreciate your help here. But I can’t handle more clients. I have to think about Walter right now. Anything else would be . . .” He broke off again and waggled his fingers in the air, this time dismissing all the hypothetical cases he couldn’t deal with. “Go back to his home and look again for more clues.”

“I’ve been there a hundred times. Or at least a dozen. And I’ve been to the pub he used to frequent, and I’ve been to Scotland Yard so much that they don’t even talk to me anymore there. There’s nothing I can do, and you don’t have time to work on the Hargreave case. So let me keep at it, let me do the investigation.”

“This is more involved than the usual sort of thing you do,” Hammersmith said.

“Yes, it is,” she said. “But it’s nothing I can’t handle, I promise.”

“And if I need you here?”

“If you need me, I’ll drop everything, I’ll let the other case go and be right here to do anything you ask.”

He could already see that he’d lost. She was now framing the debate in such a way that it was a foregone conclusion. And he couldn’t muster the energy to steer things back the way he wanted
them to go. She was probably right. If they hadn’t found Walter in a year of looking . . . Well, Walter was probably dead. Or it was even possible he didn’t want to be found. Before he’d gone missing, Day had seemed overwhelmed by the prospect of fatherhood, and his career prospects hadn’t been good. Some men in that situation might leave their families and start again somewhere else.

Hammersmith shook his head, dispelling the unworthy thought, but Hatty misunderstood the gesture.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll go back to 184 Regent’s Park Road and I’ll look for clues that aren’t there and were never there. And then I’ll do it all over again tomorrow.”

“No,” Hammersmith said, “it’s not you. I was reacting to a thought I didn’t like.”

“Thinking what?”

“Something else. Something shameful and unfair. Walter Day was a good man, and he’ll be found. But there’s no point in combing over his house again. There’s nothing there.”

“Does that mean . . . ?”

“Tell me about your case. What is it?”

“A missing man.”

“We seem to be specializing.”

“It’s all very mysterious. He works for the new store—you know, the one that opened up where Plumm’s used to be, only it’s still Plumm’s, I suppose, only much larger and with more things to buy.”

Hammersmith shook his head. He had no use for stores.

“Well, in any event, it’s there,” Hatty said. “And this man, Joseph Hargreave, works for the place. Only he didn’t come to work one day and he hasn’t been seen since.”

“Happens all the time.”

“I suppose it must, but this time someone came to us about it. His
brother is mad with worry and wants you to investigate, only he doesn’t know that it’s me doing the investigating, not you.”

“We should tell him.”

“Oh, no, you mustn’t. If he knows, he’ll hire someone else and won’t pay us.”

“Hatty, you’ve never really investigated anything before.”

“But I have. I’ve done it all along, only you didn’t hear me properly when I talked to you about those cases and you didn’t know what I was doing, Mr Hammersmith. But I’ve never hidden the truth, not precisely. And I’m really quite capable. You’ll see.”

“A client ought to be able to expect a certain level of—”

“How old are you, Mr Hammersmith?”

“I have no idea.” (He really didn’t have any idea.)

“Well, you look quite young to me. And how many years did you work as a detective for the Yard?”

“Well, none, I suppose. But I—”

“You were a sergeant, and I know all about that, but you weren’t a sergeant for a terribly long time, were you?”

“I don’t know. A few months, perhaps?”

“And before that you were a constable. How long was that?”

“Two years, perhaps?”

“So before opening this agency, you had no detective experience and virtually no experience beyond that of a common bobby.”

“There’s no such thing as a common bobby. It’s a very hard job, and those men put their lives at risk for the safety of their fellow Londoners.”

She went on as though he hadn’t spoken. “But people like this Dr Hargreave, all our clients, believe you’re up to the task, and why?”

“Because—”

“Because you’re a man.” She stopped, and her shoulders sagged. She suddenly looked tired. Hammersmith wondered where she lived and whether she had anyone to take care of her.

“I’m sure it’s not only that,” he said. She opened her mouth, but he put up a hand to stop her. “You’ve had your say. Now let me talk. Yes, I’m a man, and there are certain responsibilities that go along with that. But I’m not the sort who thinks women aren’t as smart as men. That’s ridiculous. Only I don’t like to see you put yourself in any sort of danger, that’s all.”

“Asking questions here and there won’t cause any danger.”

“That’s precisely what does cause danger. Be quiet and let me think.”

He looked again at the Walter Day case files, none of which contained anything useful. He wondered what might become of him if Hatty Pitt left. He would be alone in this office every day, obsessing further and deeper over an unsolvable mystery, caring less and less about everything else in the world. The fog would drift in through the doors and the windows and would envelop him. And he would disappear as surely as Walter had, only his body would still inhabit this office and he would still shuffle about as if he were actually contributing something to society. With no one to interact with him, to contradict him and challenge him, he might very well go mad.

“All right. Take the case.” He held up a finger to cut off her excited response. “But every day, at the end of the day, you and I will discuss this case of yours, along with any other case you decide to take into your own hands, and I will be involved in all ways I deem appropriate. You will take no action that is not approved by me. Is that agreeable enough?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He scowled at her. “Well, go on, then.”

She turned and went, but stopped in the doorway and looked back. “Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

“And I promise I won’t be in any danger.”

“That’s not a thing you can promise. Just say you will try to keep yourself out of danger.”

“I will.”

“Then it’s settled.”

“You’re very kind to care about my well-being.”

He blinked at her, unsure of what to say.

“But,” she said, “you would be much more attractive if you’d cut your hair back away from your eyes.”

She left, and Hammersmith stared, confused, at the door. What did his hair have to do with anything?