Whether he was gone or not, it hardly mattered. Saucy Jack had gifted them all the idea of himself. Others like him circled like lions around the herd. The city was changed.
Day reached into the inside pocket of his overcoat and drew out the flat leather pouch. Atop the array of heavy skeleton keys on their velvet bed was the tiny brass key to the kiosk. He picked it out and turned back to the door. Under the knob was a small keyhole. The key fit perfectly, and Day heard a click when he twisted it. The knob turned under his hand and the door swung open without another sound. He stepped inside.
There was barely enough space within the pillar for two men to stand upright. Aside from the wooden door with its small window, the interior was all of the same stone that made up the outer wall. Day closed the door behind him and passed his hands across the walls. There was a shallow ledge that circled the room at waist level. Perhaps wide enough for a candle. Day reached up and felt along the ceiling. It tapered in the middle, leading up to the lamp outside. He put his hands down and stood, looking out the window at the fog.
There was nothing here.
Whatever this lamppost-station house had represented to Inspector Adrian March, it eluded Walter Day. This was a tiny room in a vast city, and perhaps that was all it was meant to be. One of the many secrets concealed beneath the day-to-day business of the mightiest empire in the history of the world. A place of safety and hidden potential for a policeman who had ultimately been defeated by a killer of women.
Day left the kiosk. He locked the door and put the key back in its pouch. He didn’t know what he’d hoped to find here, but if Detective March had left a message, its meaning was a deeper mystery than Day was prepared to solve.
He walked away from the square and turned toward his home, his wife, and his bed.
16
Hammersmith and Pringle sat on a short wall under the drooping branches of a willow tree. They were across the street from the brownstone where Hammersmith had found the dead boy in a chimney. The street was completely deserted, and Pringle was slumped into Hammersmith’s left shoulder, snoring softly.
The moon hung low in the sky, and Hammersmith could feel the cold stones of the wall through the seat of his trousers. He thought, not for the first time, that it would have been nice if he and Pringle had the funds to sit in a hansom cab in the shadows and watch the house in relative comfort, but cabs were expensive.
Pringle shifted in his sleep, and a wet strand of drool seeped from the corner of his mouth onto Hammersmith’s arm.
Hammersmith had taken care to let no doubt show on his face while discussing the matter with Pringle, but alone in the dark, watching an empty house, and with little prospect of sleep before his next day’s shift, he could feel his confidence ebbing. Pringle was right. So, for that matter, was Inspector Tiffany. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of children died or went missing every year in London. The police lacked the resources to pursue every case, particularly if there was no evidence of a crime.
But he had once been that little boy. He had spent long hours alone in the dark doing a job he didn’t entirely understand. His own circumstances had been different, of course. He had been sent into the mines by his family to earn the money they needed for groceries and medicine. He had felt proud to contribute, useful and grown-up. But the fear and the loneliness had been there with him every minute of every day.
He was certain the boy had shimmied up that chimney on the promise of no greater reward than a smile or a pat on the shoulder or an extra biscuit. To Hammersmith’s way of thinking, that made the chimney sweep, and maybe the people who hired the chimney sweep, criminals no different from highway robbers or pickpockets. Maybe not murderers in any technical sense, but people who should be taken off the streets and locked up for society’s good.
And that was Hammersmith’s job.
From far away he heard the clip-clop of hooves on cobblestones. He leaned back into the shadows of the willow and shook Pringle awake.
“Wha-?”
“Shush. Someone’s coming.”
Pringle nodded and wiped his cheek with the sleeve of his jacket, then frowned at the silvery streak of drool and tried to brush it away.
“Is it them?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“We don’t know anyone’s ever going to return to this place.”
Hammersmith ignored Pringle. It wasn’t the first time he’d said it that night.
The two of them retreated behind the wall and watched as a patch of darkness blacker than the night moved up the street toward them. A pinprick of light bobbed along in time to the sound of the horses’ hooves. When it drew closer to them, the light resolved itself into a lantern on a pole affixed to the side of a great black carriage. Two sweating chargers pulled the carriage up even with the row of houses and stopped beside the wall, snorting and stamping.
After a moment, the driver hopped down from his perch and opened the door on the other side. He fetched a stool from the seat above and placed it on the cobblestones. Hammersmith could see under the carriage as first one foot lowered itself and then another, and a man’s weight eased forward. The feet touched ground and the man turned, apparently to help a woman down because a pair of dainty ankles were briefly visible before the hem of a frilly dress settled, obscuring the view. Another woman followed, then a child. The four pairs of feet moved away from the coach, and the driver jumped back up to his seat and whipped his reins across the horses’ backs. The carriage moved on up the street.
Hammersmith stood and stepped over the wall. He felt a drop of water hit his arm and he looked up. Another drop hit him in the eye and he gasped. He wiped his face with his sleeve and looked out across the street where the man from the carriage had also felt the rain coming. He was hurrying his two women and the child up the steps to the house. He was carrying a black leather overnight bag, and one of the women was lugging a much larger suitcase.
Hammersmith walked briskly across the street. He felt Pringle keeping pace. More raindrops splashed on his head and shoulders as he strode, his heels clicking against the cobblestones.
The man hadn’t noticed them yet. He was busy unlocking the front door. Hammersmith put his right foot on the bottommost step and cleared his throat.
“Excuse me, sir.”
The man visibly jumped and dropped his bag. The two women turned to look at Hammersmith, but the little boy stared up at the man, perhaps surprised to see his father caught unawares. The man turned slowly toward Hammersmith, looked down the steps, and pursed his lips, but said nothing. He had an elaborate beard that had been groomed into four outward-Jutting curls beckoned the eye, drawing attention from the rest of his long, horsey face.
“Are you the homeowner here?”
The man nodded, his curls bouncing on his chin.
“May I ask your name, sir?”
“Why, I’m Dr Charles Shaw.”
He said it as if the two police should already know him, as if everyone should know him.
“My colleague and I are with the Metropolitan Police. We’d like a word with you, please.”
Charles Shaw turned back to the door and got it open. He ushered the two women and the boy inside and closed the door behind them. He looked up at the black sky.
“It’s late, Constable, and it’s beginning to rain. Perhaps you’ll come back at a proper time?”
Hammersmith ignored the irritation in the doctor’s voice.
“Beg pardon, sir, but you don’t seem to be home much of late, and I’d hate to miss this opportunity to talk to you.”
Shaw stared at Hammersmith so long that Hammersmith thought the doctor might come down off the porch and hit him. He watched Shaw’s hand curl into a fist, relax, and then curl up again. Behind Hammersmith, he could hear Pringle shift from one foot to the other. They were all getting wet.