Blood Is Blood Read online

  “We could both do with a bath and a change of clothes,” I remarked. “You look like a bandicoot.”

  “No less than you, Mr. L.”

  I shook my hair, trying to get the plaster out, and brushed down my suit with my hands. Then I wiped my face with my handkerchief. The transformation was negligible, but at least I had made the effort.

  “We’ll have to climb down into the cellar and retrieve our files, too. The cabinets will be smashed, no doubt.”

  “Is that important now, sir?” he asked. “I mean, they’re just files. There must be a dozen things we should be doing besides that.”

  “Not if I’m going to find who did this. Someone who had a grudge against the Guv must have done this, and I’m going to track the fellow and make him pay.”

  Jenkins looked at me blankly. “Without Mr. B.?”

  “Do you see him visiting the offices anytime soon?” I asked, my nerves a-jangle. “I understand what you’re saying, but in theory, I have a skull filled with more than porridge. I’ve been educated by the best, and I don’t mean my time at Oxford. Besides, I can’t simply follow Barker about forever without doing enquiries of my own. We’ll take this logically and see what we uncover, starting with those files.”

  “Are you sure? Why not wait and let him solve it?”

  “Because I suspect Mrs. Ashleigh won’t let him come back for some time. She nearly bit me at the priory because I had forgotten to call her. Unfortunately, Mac hadn’t. On top of that, I walked out in a huff. I’m as jumpy as a cat.”

  “That was my fault,” Jenkins said. “I should have called her first. Anyway, why all the rush?”

  “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m getting married in a fortnight. Our honeymoon begins immediately afterwards. I’m not going to hand a half-finished case to an injured employer. If I can’t solve one case, if I cannot do what Mr. Barker does, what good am I? I might as well resign.”

  “Good luck,” he said, putting as much doubt into the words as he could.

  “I’m not going back to the priory to face Mrs. Ashleigh right now. Why don’t you go and bring me a report of the Guv’s condition?”

  “Righto,” he said.

  I shook my finger at him, much as Mrs. Ashleigh had just done to me. “And no stopping at a public house on the way.”

  “It never crossed my mind!” he called from the stairwell.

  I went downstairs to number 7 again. If anything, it looked worse than before. There was a limp rope suspended into the cellar. Slowly, I climbed over the side, knowing that if I fell and injured myself no one would be there to save me. A thick layer of dust had settled over everything and motes hung in the air. I moved boards about until I found what I was looking for: our broken filing cabinet.

  One doesn’t wake one day with a whim to blow up a private enquiry agent. There had to be a reason. Barker had trod on someone’s toes and now that person had taken his revenge, someone who’d had a long time to stew over it, and if he was worth his mettle, he would keep coming until the Guv died or submitted. I began collecting files. I had been proud of that cabinet: every case docketed, reams of neatly typed notes in folders. Now it had been dashed to pieces and our files scattered everywhere. I’d need something, a bucket perhaps, to lift them to the first floor, where I could try to make sense of the loose, scattered papers.

  I heard a low whistle, and a composed voice overhead asked, “Some doings, eh?”

  I looked up and saw a well-built man in a cutaway coat. I knew he was from Scotland Yard, but it took me a moment to identify him.

  “Chief Constable McNaughton,” I said.

  “I’ve been out all morning,” he remarked. “I only heard about the accident when I got back to ‘A’ Division about a quarter hour ago.”

  “It wasn’t an accident.”

  “Poor choice of words,” he replied. “Disturbance, then. How is your employer? Is he going to pull through?”

  “I have no idea. I left the priory before the diagnosis was tendered. Not good, certainly. One of his limbs was shattered. I saw the bone myself.”

  He looked down into the gaping hole. “What do you know so far?”

  “The blast was set deliberately. There look to have been four charges, according to the captain of the fire brigade. He thinks the dynamiter used just enough charge to blow out the major supports, and then the floor fell in upon itself. It’s obvious the bomber knew what he was doing.”

  “Finesse,” McNaughton said. “Most dynamiters over-charge, blowing themselves to bits. Any prior notes or warnings?”

  “None,” I admitted.

  The chief constable put his hands in the pockets of his trousers and considered. “You’re on your own then, without your employer. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to go through our files to see who might want revenge against Mr. Barker,” I answered.

  “That could be a very long list. He certainly didn’t open this agency to become beloved.”

  “True, but most of the suspects are incarcerated and have no one willing to put themselves out for them. I’m hoping I can create a list of those who seem likely or capable. Perhaps one of them has been released from prison recently and wants to kill the man who put him there.”

  “That’s where CID would start,” the chief constable admitted. He was in charge of the Criminal Investigation Department, which was considered the best in Europe.

  “This could take awhile,” I said, looking at the jumble of papers before me. “First I’ll have to decide what papers went in which files.”

  “If you’ll get me a list of possible suspects, we’ll find where they are at the moment,” he offered. “If any of them are in prison, we’ll see if anyone suspicious has come calling.”

  “I would appreciate that very much.”

  “You understand this was a crime against a citizen,” he said, looking down into the hole again.

  “Two citizens. What’s your point?”

  “Only that we’ll be looking into the matter ourselves. Would you provide information for us as well, since we are doing a favor for you?”

  I considered before I spoke. We are a private agency, but we had worked with the CID before. It was always a good idea to stay in their good graces.

  “Done.”

  “Right, then,” he said. “Cheerio.”

  He left me with the giant pile of wood and plaster and the mountain of papers. I surveyed the room, thinking there must be some better way to get the files out of the basement. I didn’t want to swarm up the rope every time. A ladder, I realized. That’s what I needed. A ladder and some crates that were not too large.

  I pulled myself out of the hole and visited an ironmongery in Charing Cross which was willing, for a good fee, to deliver the ladder and crates immediately. When I returned, Jenkins was standing, arms akimbo, staring into the hole again. It had a certain fascination to it.

  “Do you have any word about Mr. Barker yet?” I asked.

  “I do,” he said. “One leg is shattered. The other is badly bruised but intact. He’s cracked a few ribs and took a good thumping to his cranium. Concussion, the doctor called it. He hasn’t awakened, yet. He’ll be in hospital for the foreseeable future.”

  “He’s lucky he survived the fall,” I said.

  Jenkins nodded his head, still staring into the hole. “He may be confined to a bath chair for a while. When he wakes, he won’t be happy.”

  “Yes, well, if he keeps angering people, he should expect something like this,” I said. “And I should as well. I’ve rarely thought about what happens after someone has been arrested because of one of our investigations, or about the trial and the punishment afterward.”

  The ladder and crates soon arrived, and we spent the next hour carrying boxes of loose papers up to the ground floor. That would be the easy part, compared to matching each with its brethren. It was like a child’s game, a jigsaw puzzle.

  As Mac will attest, I am not the most orderly of persons. I w
ould hate to contemplate how my room would be without him to straighten things. It is my private place and, to some degree, I prefer it disorderly. My work, on the other hand, requires my being able to lay hands on one file or one piece of information at a moment’s notice, because the Guv demands it. Heaven help me if I’m found rummaging around searching for a date or address and turning red under his steely scrutiny.

  That was in the ash heap now. I must do what I could with what was in front of me and hope it would be enough. Could I actually compile a list of likely bombers with a deep hatred of Barker? Even that seemed difficult.

  Looking through the files, I found many that warranted interest: the Spring-Heeled Jack case, for example, or the Ludgate poisonings. However, neither left a criminal free to threaten enquiry agents such as ourselves. The Irish Republican Brotherhood case in which Scotland Yard was bombed certainly qualified, but all of the bombers were currently in prison. Were the Irish attempting another campaign with our offices as the opening salvo? They were no less likely than a French anarchist named Perrine, who had threatened to blow Barker’s head from his shoulders. I would definitely add his name to the list.

  Of the Guv’s more well-known adversaries, Sebastian Nightwine, was dead, Seamus O’Muircheartaigh was rumored to be, and Mr. K’ing, the casino-owning husband of his ward, Bok Fu Ying, was in a sanitarium to overcome an addiction to opium.

  The problem was that people had relatives to aid them, or money enough to buy confederates willing to do practically anything, so in a way no one could be ruled out. If a criminal died due to our machinations, how were we to know that a relative had enough anger festering inside him to warrant an investigation? For that matter, a prisoner who swore death to Barker and myself one minute might have totally forgotten it the next. Having reckoned the costs, another might have come to the conclusion that going against the agency was not the wisest of ideas, but he wouldn’t send us a note informing us of a change of heart. The only thing I could hope for was a workable list of names, knowing it might not be all-encompassing.

  I looked about me at the packing cases holding files and the ones full of loose papers. Sooner or later, I would have to go through everything. I was not looking forward to facing that anytime soon.

  “Six boxes,” I said, looking at the crates on the empty floor when I was done.

  “We only began with three.”

  “Yes, but they were heavily packed. I should know. I packed them myself.”

  Over the next several hours, thanks to a number of telephone calls by Jenkins, a parade of workers descended on number 7, lifting boards and unearthing furniture.

  Meanwhile, I sat in a chair behind the temporary desk that was not yet Barker’s and tried to assemble his papers again. Fully half had fallen out of the broken cabinet in order, and those went into two of the crates.

  I had the desk covered in tall stacks of papers by then—all it could hold as far as space was concerned. I was in a world of words, sentences which trailed off into nothing, to be united with a paragraph that had no beginning. After three hours, I was beginning to make some degree of progress and had created a working list of men who had threatened us. They included Jacques Perrine, the French anarchist currently residing in La Santé Prison in Paris. The case had occurred before my time, but the Guv had actually gone to Paris for several weeks, posing as another anarchist. Barker told me Perrine was a hardened killer.

  Next was Henry Strathmore, a corrupt financier whom we had only recently brought down. He had created a scheme to bilk dozens of MPs and aristocrats of their fortunes. He had been less dangerous than Perrine, but I myself had heard him tell Barker to set his affairs in order.

  Third was Joseph Keller, a man who had slaughtered his entire family: his wife, his children, and two sisters. Barker had helped track him, and when he was caught, he called a blood oath that my employer would feel the point of his knife. Like Strathmore, he was in Newgate Prison. Unlike him, he was soon to hang for his crimes.

  Then there was Dr. Henry Thayer Pritchard. He had sunk three wives into various bogs about the country in order to collect the insurance money. It was one of Barker’s older cases, but he’d told me about pursuing him. He had hoped to see him hang, but a clever barrister had successfully pled for a long stay at Burberry Asylum on the grounds of insanity. He had not threatened Barker per se, but he seemed to belong on the list, as far as I was concerned.

  Finally, there was Jack Hobson, leader of a notorious gang of brothers in Shoreditch who had beaten two constables nearly to the point of death. Barker was not happy with the light sentence Hobson had received. I had been present when he passed us in chains and said his brothers would “do for him.”

  That was the lot, five men who had threatened Cyrus Barker. One of them had made good on his promise, almost. I needed to stop him or he’d try again.

  “Jeremy!” I called. “Could you take this list to ‘A’ Division and make sure Chief Constable McNaughton gets it?”

  “Yes, sir, I will, but you have a visitor.”

  Looking up, I saw a young woman enter the room, clutching her reticule and looking in bewilderment at the empty walls and the dusty man shuffling papers about.

  “May I help you?” I asked.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I was up and out of my seat in a trice, not because the young woman was pretty, although she was, but because the office and its occupant were far from being ready for visitors. There were two exceedingly hard wooden chairs, a desk, and a basket chair, and that was all there was in the way of furniture. There were no rugs, no fabric on the bay window, nothing that announced that the room was ready for a client, if client she was.

  “May I help you, miss?” I asked. “I mean, ma’am?”

  I noticed her ring. It’s important to notice things like that in our business. She wore a dress and matching hat in a color that was neither light gray nor light green, but a mixture of both. She wore a—well, I’m no fashion reporter. She was dressed well. We need not go into details.

  “Has something happened?” she asked, looking about.

  “An accident,” I replied. “A gas main exploded and we were forced to move here temporarily. Please excuse my dusty appearance.”

  “Are you Mr. Barker?”

  “No, I am his assistant, Mr. Llewelyn. How may I help you?”

  “I was recommended by someone to see Mr. Barker. If he can’t find Roger, he can’t be found, they said.”

  “Who is Roger?” I asked.

  “He is my husband. He’s gone inexplicably missing.”

  She brought a handkerchief to her eye. Belatedly, I lifted a hand toward one of the dusty chairs.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Mrs.—”

  “Archer. Camille Archer.”

  “Won’t you have a seat?”

  Mrs. Archer had a pale, comely face, and gray eyes almost exactly the shade of her ensemble. The feature that made all the difference was her nose. It was turned up and delicate; in profile, it had an intriguing bump at the end. It made her look impudent, even saucy. Despite her expensive clothes she’d never be mistaken for an aristocrat. On the other hand, I could picture gentlemen of the middle class fighting over her as a prize. To a merchant, no bangle would ever decorate an arm as well as this young woman with the upturned nose.

  “You say he has gone missing?” I asked. “For how long?”

  “Five days!” she replied, grasping the arm of the chair with emotion. She seemed to be holding in a great deal of pain and worry.

  “What is your husband’s full name?”

  “Roger Alan Archer.”

  “And what is his occupation?”

  “He is a contractor,” she said, with a note of pride in her voice. “He builds private residences.”

  “I see. Under what circumstances did he go missing?”

  “He went to his office early last Tuesday, in order to collect some plans. He told the clerk that he was going to one of the properties in Mayfair. No one
noticed until the latter part of the day that he never arrived.”

  “So, he could be anywhere in London, or even in Europe. He could be halfway to America by now.”

  She held the lace handkerchief to that bewitching nose of hers. I was still taking impressions. Her hair was a light chestnut color, very full, and the curls were pinned up. She wore pearl earrings, and the pearls were large, attesting to her husband’s wealth. She was perhaps three-and-twenty. From appearances, Roger Archer must be quite successful, and was likely older than his wife.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, as if ready to cry.

  “Madam, I’m afraid we cannot undertake such an investigation. Mr. Barker has been injured, and we have not enough staff for the kind of enquiry you seek.”

  “Oh, please, sir!” she pleaded, pulling herself to the edge of her seat, perched no more than an inch or two from the edge. She reached out to touch me, but at that last minute pulled back, aware it would be inappropriate.

  “I’m very sorry,” I told her. “Even if Mr. Barker were here, I’m afraid he would not accept your case. Between the two of us it would take at least a week to track all the possible leads. We’d have to stalk London, visit all the ports and steamships, and talk to every cabman in the city. Then there are the Undergrounds.”

  “How can I persuade you to change your mind?”

  “You cannot, I fear.”

  She actually seized my wrist then, in her hand.

  “Oh, please, I implore you!”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Archer,” I said, disentangling myself. “For such an enterprise, Scotland Yard would be the only one to consult. They have the resources. We do not.”

  “But the scandal!” she cried. “It could endanger his business prospects.”

  “Can you think of anyone who might mean your husband harm?”

  She nodded, and sniffed. “As I said, he is a contractor. Contracts are won by undercutting others. Roger calls it a ‘cutthroat business.’ Many competitors are trying to solicit the same clients. My husband is ambitious. He frequently overworks himself to stay competitive, sixteen or eighteen hours a day, because his agency is relatively new and he’s eager for it to grow.”