“Bagged him but good,” I answered. “He’s in police custody, though I’m not certain which police.”
“So, tell me who it was and what happened.”
I told him everything from the time Barker first put the punting pole into the water until we had staggered into the warehouse still smoldering. It took almost half an hour of explaining. We had had an eventful evening.
“So it was Carrick,” Mac said. “How long do you suppose the Guv had known?”
“I have no idea,” I said, looking at the slumbering figure on the bed. “The important thing is it’s done. Miacca is in custody, Bethnal Green is safe, and we can go back to Newington again. No more stony mattresses.”
“No more eight-hour vigils.”
“No more meals served at room temperature.”
“Fresh sheets, clean laundry, fresh cream on the doorstep every morning.”
“And best of all, no infernal exercises.”
“Do you gentlemen intend to talk all night?” Barker spoke from the bed. “Be so good as to give me twenty-five of your best.”
32
Thenext day we moved out of Bethnal Green. I was very happy to return the key to the estate agents and be shed of it. In Newington, we put our injured employer to bed and called in his personal physician, Dr. Applegate. He had to cut Barker out of his clothing. Some of the fabric that adhered to his burned skin had to be slowly removed with salad oil. The physician trussed him up like an Egyptian mummy. When he offered to treat me as well, I politely refused.
Afterward, Barker had me summon a barber to his bed. I had to keep raising my offered fee for the man’s services until he stopped grumbling and we reached a settlement. He came and cut all our hair, Mac’s included, clucking over the state of our appearance, as if acid throwing were some new fashion of which he disapproved, but he left having more than made up for the time he’d shut down his shop.
Barker was awake in the center of his old cabinet bed, with the curtains all drawn back. He was not the most handsome of men, but I hoped for his sake he would heal quickly.
“Sir,” I said. “Mac and I were wondering when you first suspected Carrick.”
“The second I saw him,” he replied.
My brows went up.
“Don’t think me a genius, yet, lad. I thought the same thing about Dr. Fitzhugh and William Stead. Detection is not about finding someone and fashioning a charge that will stick to him. It’s more like a footrace. One knows the winner is among the runners, but only when the others have dropped out and the race is finished will you know who it is. In this case, I began with a couple of assumptions.
“My first was that Miacca was mad. He worked from a compulsion to kill young girls, but his madness was not patently obvious or he would have been arrested by Scotland Yard immediately. They are not simpletons, and they have great resources. Dunham is a good man, but Swanson is a first-rate detective. It was a challenge to work against him in this case.
“My second assumption was that Miacca was educated, for only an educated person would quote Blake or parrot your Mr. Lear. The problem was that so many of our suspects were well educated. Carrick, Miss Levy, Dr. Fitzhugh, William Stead, Mr. Clay, Lord Hesketh, and Dashwood had seen time at university. My assumption has been proven false. I now believe that Rose Carrick worked in collaboration with her husband in writing the taunting notes. She’s the one who chose the victims.”
“Now wait,” I said. “Are you claiming Rose Carrick helped her husband? That implies that she knew what he was and what he did.”
“More than that, it implies that she did not care. Her own husband assaulted and murdered children, and she helped him do so. I believe it was her task to get rid of the bodies when he was done with them. He would not have cared what became of the corpses. She was the organized one, the planner sitting in the British Museum, cribbing poems to use in taunting letters. She was his helpmeet and protector. She would have done anything for him, suffered anything. In fact, she did.”
“But why?” I asked. “Who would put up with that?”
“Do you recall how Stephen Carrick ran into trouble at university and ended up losing his inheritance?”
“Yes, he was consorting with a fallen woman.”
“That fallen woman, I believe, was Rose Carrick. Her life had reached the point where she was living as a prostitute in Oxford. The senior Carrick found that they had taken up together and demanded he give her up. Carrick refused, not because he was in love with her but because he would not be dictated to by his father. Rose may have interpreted it as such, and no doubt, she persuaded herself she was in love. She molded her life around him and defended him fully. In her mind, she had somehow won the prize, the handsomest, most intelligent, wealthy gentleman she’d ever met. By the time she discovered that he was less than perfect, that in fact, he was a monster, it was too late. She had committed herself and would do so unto death. She loved him fully, while he, in turn, was incapable of love but knew a good thing when he saw it. I believe she even selected candidates for his abductions. It is perhaps the reason she volunteered at the Charity Organization Society in the first place.”
“That’s like another kind of madness,” I said.
Barker raised a bandaged finger. “No, not quite. Not in the eyes of the law. It was why she locked herself in the darkroom and set it ablaze. Had they both been captured, he would like have gone to the asylum, for it is probable that he is mad, but she would have been hanged as an accessory to many murders. It was a long, dangerous journey for the two of them, but she must have known it would eventually come to a bad end. He would never willingly stop adding specimens to his jar.”
“What kind of husband-”
“Husband!” Barker scoffed. “I doubt he understood the meaning of the word. A husband tries to shelter and protect his wife. He wants what’s best for her and reveres and admires her all of his days. The Carricks’ relationship was as twisted and unstable as Stephen’s mind.”
I recalled Barker’s earlier mention of marriage. I still could not quite believe he might have been married, but had he been so, I had no doubt he would have performed his duties with the steadiness he showed in all other ways. What of me? I wondered. Had I been all the husband I could have been?
“I think,” Barker went on, “that Carrick’s time at Oxford was worse than we have taken it to be. Consorting with a woman of the streets, even vowing never to give her up, is hardly a rare occurrence among undergraduates, but I believe Carrick committed his first murder there. The Carrick fortune was able to cover up the affair, but Stephen’s father saw the serious defects in his son’s character and gave him up, cutting him off without a penny. It was good that he did so. Can you imagine what deviltry he’d have gotten into with funds and plenty of leisure time?”
“How did you know it was not the Hellfire Club, sir?”
“I do not believe London so debased just yet that one could assemble a group of men together in one room willing to watch a young girl be murdered. It would be easy, on the other hand, to find a number of men like Palmister Clay, young hedonists willing to meet together, to drink and carouse in the name of an old and infamous group and to watch a young and almost naked girl being ‘sacrificed’ in a satanic ritual, providing they know it was a magician’s trick and that she was in no real danger. They weren’t men on Carrick’s level and did not know how corrupt he really was. At some point, he must have met Dashwood, using his former connections, and offered to provide not only some chilling entertainment but also the young girl to go with it. They had no idea what he did with the girls afterward and probably did not think to question him about it. I also believe he provided another service for them.”
“What is that?”
“When Rose Carrick ferried young girls into new homes or institutions, she told some that if they were not satisfied with their new surroundings, she could help set them up with young gentlemen as mistresses.”