The Lamplighter (10 page)

E
DINBURGH IS A CITY
of angles and abysses, its Old Town a medieval warren of steep, winding streets, plunging stairways, and tenements clinging to sheer slopes. It is also, by virtue of its singular construction, a city of subterranean vaults, secret tunnels, and sealed-over streets. The showpiece Princes Street Gardens themselves lie in the ravine of the emptied Nor' Loch, a once putrid cesspool of decomposing waste and floating corpses, from which luminous gases frequently issued. And at the eastern end of the old lake, buried in a gap between the markets, pavilions, circuses, and its mammoth railway hotels, lies Waverley Station, down the carriage ramp of which, on Friday night at eleven o'clock, Inspector Groves descended past the police cordon and into the realms of nightmare.

He was immediately assailed by the stench of panic, sweat, soot, vomit, horse dung, and death. The station was not crowded, fortunately, populated only by staff, railway policemen, cabmen, and some wide-eyed onlookers who had lingered to feast on the horror. Pringle stood at the base of the ramp with an East Coast Railways representative, ready to direct the Inspector to the narrow London platform. Down the line, under a catwalk bridge, a chestnut horse had plunged headfirst onto the tracks with a cab twisted behind it. The cabstand was still in disarray and portmanteaux and carpetbags were strewn everywhere. Crompton arc lamps, suspended from the crisscrossing rafters above, blazed starkly across a single human figure, splendidly attired in a blue-beaver topcoat and dislodged hat, lying spread-eagled across the platform in a pool of glistening blood.

“What's the man's name?” Groves asked tightly. He had been hauled from bed just as his head sank into the pillow after another dogged and fruitless day.

“James Ainslie,” Pringle answered. “According to the cabman who brought him here.”

“Ainslie…” The name sounded familiar. “The showman?”

“That's right, sir. An entrepreneur. A wee bit shady, or so I believe.”

“Aye.” Groves nodded vaguely, seeming to recall that the man had assisted him once or twice with a case of theft, though he had never liked him. “Has a doctor seen to him?”

“Dead as Julius Caesar, he said, and much quicker.”

“No one apprehended?”

“No one, sir.”

There was no certainty that this death was related to the others under investigation, but the sheer gruesomeness was immediately familiar. The victim's neck had been opened as though by a scythe, the tongue was lolling from a gaping rictus, and the eyes were unusually protuberant; clearly not the sort of murder that any normal man could effect, in such a public space, and escape without being caught. Groves consequently might have delighted in another potential key to the mystery, but the body also reintroduced the real fear that, despite the Wax Man's renunciation of responsibility, the case was expanding far beyond his control. And so, in lieu of an appropriate emotion, he settled on a churning stomach.

“What in God's name is the matter with his face?” he asked, having moved in for a closer inspection. He was referring not to the injuries but to the unnaturally whitened skin, darkened eyebrows, and some wispy facial hair that seemed pasted on with spirit gum.

“Seems like he made himself up, sir.”

“Like an actor?”

“He was a fixture of the theater community, sir. Seth Hogarth was one of his friends.”

Groves grimaced. “So he was trying to disguise himself? From his assailant?”

“Can't say, sir. Seems it didn't work too well, in any case.”

Groves looked around at the frowning railway constables and gawping onlookers. A couple of enterprising urchins had gained a vantage point on the catwalk bridge. “Get those imps down from there,” he snapped. “And cover the body. This is no…wax museum.” By dawn the news would engulf the city and knit the air with whispers. His potential fame would expand in direct proportion, but containing all the details in some manageable form suddenly seemed as futile as catching a cloud in a jar.

“You're the cabman?” he asked a white-capped figure standing nearby.

“I'm the…aye.” The man had a graze on his head and seemed dazed.

“Where did you bring the victim from?”

“Mr. Ainslie…?”

“Where did you pick him up from?”

“From…from Cockburn Street.”

“Cockburn Street?” It was connected with Waverley Bridge, well within walking distance. “He lives there?”

“Aye.”

“And he took a cab?”

“Mr. Ainslie…” the cabman managed, “paid very well. He was keen on privacy.”

“Privacy?” Groves blinked. “What do you mean?”

The cabman seemed short of breath. “A footman hailed me…and directed me right up to the door of Mr. Ainslie's building…and Mr. Ainslie dived into the cab like he did not care to be seen.”

Pringle interjected with the details. “He had a one-way ticket on the second-class carriage to London, sir. The ten o'clock train.”

“The ticket,” added the Railways representative, “was purchased by a footman earlier today.”

Groves glanced at the empty track. “The train has departed?”

“That's correct, sir.”

Groves frowned angrily. “Who allowed such a thing? There might have been witnesses aboard.”

“It was already pulling out when the murder occurred, sir,” Pringle explained. “Apparently Mr. Ainslie had paid to sit in his cab until the very last moment, sir. His trunk was already in the luggage van, but he had an idea he could personally transfer to the train after the last whistle had sounded.”

Groves looked at the cabman for verification. The man nodded, gulping. “Had…had the blinds down,” he said. “He was boxed up, out of sight, just waiting…for that whistle.”

“Are you telling me he could have stepped out of the cab at any time, but he chose to remain inside until the train was actually pulling out?”

“Seems he was really trying to avoid detection, sir,” Pringle offered. “The painted face was just the beginning. He did not want to be seen in public. He did not want to be stopped.”

“Avoiding detection…” Groves mused, chilled. As though fully aware that he might be hunted down and killed, even in a railway station. As though he had seen what had happened to the others, knew that he might be next, and had panicked. But even with all the precautions could not avoid his bloody fate. Groves looked at a rivulet of blood leaking across the platform from under the concealing sheet. “Did you see the one who did it?” he asked the cabman.

“No…sir.” The cabman was swallowing dryly.

“You did not see the killer make off?”

“The horse bolted.”

Groves looked down the line to the dead chestnut. “That's the horse?”

The cabman nodded, gulped, and seemed about to sob, or vomit, or both.

Pringle explained, “The cabman jumped free before the horse left the platform, sir. But he saw nothing. The horse apparently did.”

Groves was put in mind of the lighthouse keeper's wolfhound, for the horse too had left behind a trail of ordure.

“Did no one else see anything?” Groves asked.

“A few were in the vicinity, sir, but it was very late.” Pringle directed him to a small group waiting nearby: a stationmaster, a few bystanders, a couple more cabmen, and a man Groves knew as a noted pickpocket (“The Nimble Fingers of Jem”).

“Mr. Carroll,” he said, selecting the last. “Plying your trade among the travelers again?”

“I like watching trains.” Jem Carroll sniffed. He had served much prison time and was little intimidated by the law.

“You have sharp eyes, Carroll.”

“That's the truth.”

“What did you see?”

“Hard to say, Inspector.” His tone was typically defensive. “One minute the train's all steaming and pulling out. Next there's a sound like ripping fabric and a man's flung like a rag-and-bone sack across the platform.”

“You saw the killer?”

“From the corner of my eye.”

“And?”

Carroll struggled. “Hard to say. A huge shape, that's all. Wearing a cape, maybe. One moment he's there, plain as a full moon, the next he's nowhere to be seen.”

“You're not telling me he disappeared into thin air?” Groves said, though it was entirely in keeping with what he knew of the killer's capacities.

“I swear, Inspector.”

In the end Groves did not trust the pickpocket sufficiently—the man was conceivably even a conspirator—and turned to the others. “Did no one see the killer clearly?”

There was a tremulous shaking of heads.

“Are you telling me,” Groves said, finding strength in incredulity, “that a man was struck down on a platform of the city's major railway station and no one saw a thing?”

“The train was moving,” the stationmaster protested. “And there were great drafts of steam and smoke. And it was hot.”

“Hot?” The night had in fact acquired a significant chill.

“Hot.” The stationmaster acknowledged the incongruity, thought about it, and nodded. “Aye…”

“The air was twisting,” one of the cabmen offered. “Like over a stove.”

Groves's head was hurting. “Let me understand this.” He looked at all of them impatiently. “The train was pulling out, and there was much steam and smoke. There was a great heat. And no one saw the man killed?”

“There was a…shape,” the stationmaster offered. “Black…”

“Black?”

“Wearing black. A great force.”

“Where did it come from, then? It must have been waiting somewhere on the platform.”

No one answered.

“And where did it go once it had killed the man?”

Silence again.

“The heat,” the stationmaster protested. “And the smoke. It was all over in a blink.”

Groves looked around him, wondering if there were some hole or trap through which the killer might have disappeared. One of the railway tunnels, possibly? For years the disused Scotland Street tunnel had been used for nothing but mushroom culture—could the killer be lurking there? Or in any other of the uncharted apertures, underground passages, sweatshops, or old oyster cellars in this godforsaken city? Did this explain the supernatural ease with which he appeared and disappeared? And the extraordinary efforts to which Ainslie went to conceal himself? Groves's eyes wandered up to the station ceiling, vaulted and ribbed like that of a cathedral, and again he had cause to wonder about the forces arrayed against him.

“There was a page fluttering about, sir,” Pringle said. He unfolded a sheet not dissimilar to one of Groves's own ledger pages. “One of the transport police picked it up, sir. The first one at the scene.”

“Where was it?”

“On the platform a wee distance from the body.”

“A message? From the killer?”

Pringle handed the page across. “Seems likely, sir.”

Groves looked at the crude black-ink message:

 

CE GRAND

TROMPEUR

 

He nodded sagely. “It's French,” he decided.

“I know a wee bit of French, sir,” Pringle offered.

“Aye? What's your translation?”

“‘This great cheat.' ‘This great swindler.' Something like that.”

Groves squinted at the words. “Seems about right.” He glanced at the covered body. “Was Mr. Ainslie from France?”

“No, sir. But there's no reason to say that the murderer might not be.”

“So the murderer writes the accusation in his native tongue?”

“It's possible, sir.”

Ce Grand Trompeur
. For some reason Groves thought of Evelyn Todd, the delicate Irish lass with her sheepish claims. She had mentioned something about a second message, hadn't she?
Accusing words
. Could this be a third one? And what had she said of the killer?
A man who has traveled far
. A man who might be familiar with Scripture and the languages of the Continent. Who might have business with professors, philanthropists, and entrepreneurs. And who might somewhere in his wanderings have encountered the sorcerous ability to move like a shadow, surround himself with smoke and twisted air, and make off like a rat or a blast of steam. And who could kill like a bear or a saber-toothed tiger.

Groves recalled the look Evelyn had given him before departing his office. The mysterious gleam which, in combination with the Wax Man's assurance that a woman was at the heart of the case, had haunted him ever since. Indeed, the whole image of the mysterious waif—her tortured eyes, bloodless skin, and raven attire—had been circling him like a wasp all day. He wanted to wave it away but at the same time he was stimulated by its proximity, the suggestion of a sting. He looked again at the newfound message and wondered if he had in his very hands a way of establishing the veracity of her assertions. For if what she claimed about her powers was true, then it was fair to expect that she had dreamed of Ainslie's murder also. But he would need to be swift if he was to catch her unguarded. Already he could see Douglas Macleod of the
Dispatch
approaching with an open notepad.