The major shook his head with his eyes closed and a smile on his face. A laugh escaped his lips. “Eleven, there are eleven.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s the one I’m in now. You didn’t read about that one in old Dante, did you? And then, there’s the really, really deep one where they put all the blasted, thieving, useless private enquiry agents!”
He tried to fill his glass again, but the bottle was finally empty. He looked at it woefully. “I keep pouring this stuff down my throat, hoping for release. The damned publican must be watering it down. I’m sorry. I just want oblivion.”
“If it’s oblivion you want-” Barker said suddenly, his fist coming up under the major’s chin, jarring him with the blow. DeVere dropped into his arms like a sack of potatoes. My employer hoisted the major onto his right shoulder and turned to me. “Go downstairs and settle the bill.”
I don’t believe we had been in the building more than five minutes, and now Barker was leaving with DeVere on his shoulders. I had expected a protracted argument, but Barker had a more expedient method of getting a drunken, angry man out of a public house.
“Where to now, sir?” the cabman asked, once I’d paid DeVere’s bill and we were all ensconced in the carriage.
“Fulham,” Barker growled.
“That’s clear ’cross town, sir!”
“Then you had better not dawdle. I’ll make it worth your time.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I suppose this has turned out as well as could be expected,” the Guv said. “There was a chance he would go back to his barracks and blow his brains out.”
The major came to halfway through the journey.
“Where the hell am I?” he asked.
“You are going home to sleep,” Barker told him. “Tomorrow morning, you’re going to bury your wife and daughter.”
DeVere sat and stared as the carriage rolled down the street. I wasn’t certain whether he’d taken the words in until he spoke again a minute or two later.
“I’m gonna be flogged for this or court-martialed. Or both.”
Neither Barker nor I vouchsafed a remark, but DeVere was suddenly garrulous. “You-you’re gonna catch this blackguard and make him pay, aren’t you?”
“I have every intention of doing so.”
“Gwendolyn…my little Gwendolyn. Used to rock her on my knee, you know.”
“You owe it to her memory to be at her graveside, sober.”
“Have you ever lost a child, Mr. Barker?”
“No.”
“Have you ever lost a wife?”
Barker didn’t respond. My jaw dropped. DeVere, drunk as he was, didn’t notice and continued. “Then don’t dictate terms to me. I’m paying for the bloody funeral and I’m going to be there. Now leave off.”
We arrived at the DeVere residence. The butler, a capable man who looked like he might have seen military before domestic service, met us and helped his master from the vehicle, issuing orders to the maids for a pot of coffee and a hot bath. We left the arrangements for DeVere’s appearance in the man’s capable hands. On the way back to Bethnal Green, Barker was back to his normal self, watching traffic and turning over aspects of the case, but I pondered the unanswered question in my heart.
18
I suppose, somewhere, there is such a thing as an enjoyable funeral. Someone lived a long life, prospered, was revered and loved and was finally ready to greet his Maker once more. His mourners would say, “He lived his life wisely and we will miss him; but he was old. It was his time to die.” He might even have been buried in the same cemetery as the one in which Gwendolyn DeVere and her mother were laid to rest the next morning, but this funeral gave no comfort to anyone, for Gwendolyn had been murdered and her mother had taken her life.
I’ve been to a lot of funerals for one lifetime. In my line of work, death is like a crow that sits upon one’s shoulder or hovers over one’s head, but this remained in my mind for years afterward. What I recall is the fine weather that Wednesday and the look of shock on the faces of all the participants. It was a day for picnicking in Hyde Park, for playing badminton or rowing on the river, and yet we were here witnessing two coffins being laid in the earth and wishing bon voyage to two souls. The sun gave no health or life; it merely accentuated the deaths of two who would still have been alive if we, Barker and I, had only been a little more diligent, if we had only known the right course of action.
DeVere looked as if he had shriveled. His mind seemed to be floating somewhere in the clouds as the service was read. He was not alone. All of us-the unnamed relatives, the ladies and gentlemen who worked at the Charity Organization Society, the Life Guards who stood in silent sympathy with their comrade, and the husbands and wives who knew the DeVeres-stood about looking slightly deflated and out of focus, like dispirited statues. After the rites, in that bright, unnatural sunshine, everyone hemmed and hawed, said the proper thing to the major, and drifted off, their summer day spoiled by this close brush against the sleeve of the specter of Death. There would be no gathering at the home.
Stephen and Rose Carrick came up to us after the funeral.
“How is the investigation coming?” he asked.
“The girl has been found, as you can see,” the Guv said. “Now all that remains is to track down her killer.”
“I hear he’s killed more than once.”
“He has, but he will not kill again,” Barker stated.
“How do you know?” Mrs. Carrick spoke up, looking over her shoulder at the newly turned earth. “He is still out there somewhere.”
“Because he knows I’m breathing down the back of his neck. He’ll try again; he is compelled to. But then I’ll have him.”
Carrick opened his mouth to say something, then shut it again. “Good,” he finally said and moved away. I was at a loss for words myself.
We found DeVere and gave him our condolences. Once through the lych-gate and into the lane, Barker and I settled our crepe-banded hats back upon our heads.
“At least,” the Guv said, “they allowed Mrs. DeVere to be buried alongside her daughter. Fifty years ago, it would have been forbidden to bury her in consecrated ground.”
“Do you really think she killed herself, sir?” I asked. “She was full of laudanum already. Perhaps she woke up and forgot she’d taken any. Perhaps she just took another dose.”
“The whole bottle?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. She was half out of her mind and drugged.”
“Perhaps,” my employer conceded, if only to make me feel better. “In either case, we shall never know.”
“I put the blame on Miacca’s shoulders. She’d still be alive if it weren’t for him. We’ve got to find him.”
“We shall,” Barker stated. “He wants to be found. These letters-‘catch me if you can’-are cries for attention. The man wants to be infamous. At some point in his life, perhaps very early, his brain began to warp the way a plant sometimes does. It twisted and grew in upon itself, and now we must pull it up by its roots before it infects others, if it is not too late.”
Barker stepped up into his cab while I climbed atop my perch behind. Our mare, Juno, had been tricked out with a black ostrich feather. The Guv beat upon the trap and I opened it.
“Shall we have lunch?”
“I am not hungry,” I replied.
“You are oversensitive. It is not good to miss a meal just before a bout. You are in training.”
“If I get peckish, I’ll eat something out of the hamper,” I said.
We rode back to Newington to change out of our mourning clothes and to take Juno back to the stable. The house looked forlorn without us, and the rooms had a musty smell. Mac had covered the furniture in the ground floor rooms with sheets, which depressed me, as if we were the ones who had been buried. I took Juno to the stable and saw her brushed down before I walked back down the New Kent Road and entered through the back gate. In the garden, cicadas whined like small machines in the summer sunshine. They contributed to the headache I was getting.