The Hellfire Conspiracy bal-4 Read online

The door opened and there he was, the Honorable Palmister Clay, as sneering and officious as ever. I hated his smug good looks and air of superiority. Let Barker handle this, I thought. I put my head down, adjusting my bowler.

  “Who in hell are you?” he demanded. That was Clay. He hadn’t changed a hair since our days at university.

  Barker snapped one of his cards out in that way he has and passed it over, still saying nothing.

  “I don’t need a private enquiry agent.” He tried to close the door in our faces, but the Guv moved his boot forward, insinuating it against the frame.

  “I am not soliciting custom, Mr. Clay.”

  “Who is it, Palmsy?” a feminine voice said behind my old enemy. Palmsy?

  A girl’s head peered around his shoulder. Not a woman’s, a girl’s. No more than thirteen, I should say, but in a frothy dressing gown, her hair up, and very adult-looking pearls in her ears. She was a child trying to act like a woman. This was the paramour his wife did not know about? My eye flicked down her arm. There was no ring on her finger. I wondered what Mrs. Clay looked like. She must be close to twice this young chit’s age.

  “Nobody,” Clay told her flatly. “Get some decent clothes on, Zena.”

  The girl disappeared again. Clay usually got what he wanted but not this time, I hoped. Please, please not this time.

  “Get out of the hall,” he said irritably, ushering us in. So far he had not recognized me. “So, I presume you are in the employ of my wife. I’ve got plenty of money, you know. I think perhaps we can come to some sort of arrangement.”

  “I don’t care about your money or your marital indiscretions, Mr. Clay. I am investigating the disappearances of several young girls in the area, girls not much younger than your lady friend.”

  “How would I know anything about that?” he demanded.

  “You are keeping a young woman here, not two streets from where at least one girl has disappeared. Scotland Yard would be very interested in this piece of information.”

  “Oh, so that’s your game, is it? Blackmail? I might have known. How much do you intend to rook me for?”

  “I have no interest in blackmail,” my employer said, unperturbed, “but I would like to know how you set up your personal arrangements here. Who introduced the two of you?”

  “That’s none of your damned business, Barker.”

  “How does one get set up in one of these little places, I wonder?” the Guv mused aloud. “Is it discussed at the gentlemen’s clubs or are the sons of lords approached by the disreputable lot who run these establishments? This really bears investigation.”

  Clay blanched. “Look,” he said, licking his lips, “perhaps I was a bit hasty. I met Zena in Whitechapel. I fancied her and offered to put her up here.”

  “I see. And her surname is…?”

  “Harris, and that’s all the information you’ll get out of me. She is of legal age. I shall speak to my solicitor. I will not be harassed in this manner by a common detective.”

  “I have not been harassing you, Mr. Clay. You would definitely know if I were harassing you. You know nothing of the missing girls? They were violated and strangled.”

  “Look, I don’t know anything about any bloody girls. You’re wasting my valuable time. Now take your man and go!” He opened the door and waved us to leave.

  “Hello, Palmsy,” I said, raising my head so that we were face-to-face.

  Clay let out a curse. “Tommy Llewelyn. I might have known. I wondered what rock you’d crawled under. So, you’ve got your revenge, have you? Hired a private ’tec to catch me with a girl, and me a married man.”

  “As a matter of fact, I work for Mr. Barker.”

  “I assumed you’d be dead by now. Thought you might have drunk yourself into an early grave.”

  “I was wondering the same about you,” I said tartly.

  “Actually, I’m glad you’re alive,” he countered. He slapped me smartly across the face. “I challenge you to a fight. We never properly finished our little match.”

  I was ready to begin the match right there and then, but Barker thrust a wall-like shoulder between us.

  “I accept,” I snapped. “Name the time and place, and I’ll be there. This time, you won’t have two friends holding my arms.”

  “Let us say nine o’clock, next Thursday evening. The German Gymnasium. Queensberry rules.”

  “I’ll be looking forward to it!”

  “We shall see. Well, gentlemen, unless you intend to march me down to the closest constabulary-which I assure you my father, Lord Hesketh, will have something to say about-I suggest you get off my property.”

  We left the building and began to walk north to Green Street.

  “I believe you promised me not to enter into a fight,” Barker finally growled.

  “No, sir. I promised not to challenge him. He challenged me. I merely accepted.”

  “Tell me, lad, how many times have you had a pair of boxing gloves on your hands in your life?”

  I thought about that a moment. “Well, just once, actually.”

  “And how old were you?”

  “Eleven.”

  “And what happened?”

  “I was thrashed, as I recall.”

  “Whereas, Mr. Clay attends the German Gymnasium regularly, from the sound of it.”

  “But-” I began, but my employer interrupted.

  “He is six inches taller than you, has a longer arm length, and outweighs you by almost two stone.”

  “But my training, sir. I’ve been training with you for months.”

  “Your training will be useless in the ring. You’ll be fighting under Queensberry rules, with your hands encased in gloves. Yours will feel like pillows, whereas his shall feel more like lead weights when they strike you.”

  It finally began to sink in then. It was I who was going to be publicly humiliated. Palmister Clay really was going to get what he wanted. “Blast,” I said.

  “And you’ll get no sympathy from me, lad. I warned you. You got yourself into this mess, and you’ll just have to fight your way out. Or take your drubbing like a man.”

  11

  “Where are we going, sir?” I asked. We were now heading south on his instructions. North, I could see, or west, but not south, unless we were going back to the docks.

  “Reverend McClain’s.”

  I was under no misapprehension that the Guv was in need of spiritual advice. It was true that the Reverend Andrew McClain was a firebrand in the pulpit of his Mile End Mission, but more people knew him as Handy Andy, former heavyweight bare-knuckle champion of London in the days before Queensberry rules. He could still deliver a walloping right cross and was Barker’s sparring partner. I wondered if he intended for Andy to give me lessons, but the Guv was down to single-word sentences, which was not a good sign. I had used up all his goodwill for the day with my rash actions.

  The Mile End Mission is entered by a latched gate covered in peeling brown paint. Inside, there is a pump in the center of a courtyard adjacent to the old church, which caused me to assume this had once been a stable yard. We stopped and washed our hands at the pump, which was as close to a ritual for my employer as I’d ever seen.

  The place seemed deserted when we entered. We searched all through the building, until a clanking sound finally drew us down to the cellar. There the reverend sat on the floor in his shirtsleeves, covered in rust, removing a length of pipe. He rubbed a drop of sweat from his nose with the back of his hand, transferring the rust to his face, and glanced at us without interest.

  “Plumbing?” Barker asked.

  “Boiler,” came the reply. “Pipes are full of scale. Come to lend a hand?”

  “I don’t know the first thing about cleaning boiler pipes,” Barker said.

  “Nor I, but it hasn’t stopped me.”

  “You’ll only break it further. Call someone in. I shall pay for it. I have something else for you to do, something more in your line.”

  “Saving
souls?”

  “Busting heads.”

  “Ah,” Andy said with a grin, “the laying on of hands.”

  “Something like that. Thomas here has gotten himself in a spot of trouble, thanks to that Celtic temper of his. He’s been challenged to a boxing match.”

  “Bare knuckle?”

  “No, Qu-that is, the new rules.”

  McClain got as sour a look as I’d ever seen on his pious face. Since he had been a champion under the old rules, the marquis was not to be mentioned here. “How long does he have to train?”

  “Four days.”

  “Four days!” the missionary repeated, shaking his head. “You want me to train him in half a week? What shall I do after that, walk across the Thames? Or shall I part it, perhaps?”

  “Such sarcasm is unbecoming in a man of the cloth. I merely need you to train him.”

  “I quit that, you know. I don’t box professionally and I don’t train. I’ve been asked several times.”

  “Your retirement has been well documented, Andrew, but Thomas needs the training. I understand the odds are against him and that he cannot be properly trained in a week, but there are…mitigating circumstances.”

  “Buy me a new boiler, and we’ll call it square,” McClain stated.

  “I’ll get someone in. He’ll clean it and replace what needs to be replaced.”

  “You don’t trust my recommendation?”

  “You would recommend this entire pile be razed and built again at my expense.”

  “Nonsense, unless of course, you are offering.” He paused. “Four days. The very idea. Learn piano in four days. Learn Latin, maybe, but not boxing. That takes a lifetime. So, where’s it going to be, this match of the century?”

  “The German Gymnasium, next Thursday.”

  “Well, at least there’s some reason for hope. Those prigs at the German won’t know the difference. He’ll have to move in, of course.”

  “No. I need him. We’re in the middle of an investigation. You can have him now and again, around his work. He’ll have to be satisfied with that, and so will you.”

  “You’re a hard man, Cyrus Barker.”

  Barker didn’t respond beyond a slight smile.

  “Very well,” McClain continued, “but I won’t stand in his corner. I cannot be seen participating in this momentary aberration known as modern boxing, and I won’t back an improperly trained man. You’ll have to coach him yourself.”

  “Done.”

  “I’m not through yet. One can bring a horse to the track, but he still might not run. You’ve been as silent as the grave this entire time, Tommy boy. Are you up to this? You’ll probably get walloped anyway, but if you’re willing to learn something, I’m willing to teach you.”

  “I’m willing,” I replied.

  McClain pushed himself up off the floor and smacked his rust-covered hands together.

  “Very well,” he said. “Give me a chance to get cleaned up a bit, and I shall meet you at the ring upstairs.”

  A mission with a boxing ring under it would have sounded absurd in the West End, but things are not so hard and fast in Mile End Road, and occasionally one found two unrelated ventures knocked together into one. The reverend didn’t make any money from the ring, of course, save from Barker himself, who used it regularly.

  I ruminated on the fact that I had displeased my employer with my actions. The training and the fight itself, whatever the outcome, was peripheral to the investigation. It was a waste of time and effort that should have been spent finding Gwendolyn DeVere’s killer. I had tried to convince myself that Clay was a part of it all.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I said to him when we walked into the ring. “I didn’t mean for my personal life to intrude into the case. There is no proof that Clay is involved in Miss DeVere’s disappearance. Much as I would like to think he is Mr. Miacca, I doubt even he is capable of such heinous deeds.”

  “I would be inclined to agree with you, lad,” Barker said. “I doubt Mr. Clay has even the aplomb to keep his mistress secret from his wife for very long. However, his presence in the district strikes me as a coincidence, and you know I do not believe in coincidence. Follow the line of incidents back far enough, and I’m certain one shall find where the two converge.”

  “You actually think there is a connection?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes, else I’d have stopped you from making a fool of yourself.”

  “Thank you,” I said a trifle bitterly.

  “Describe the building for me, lad, the one where Mr. Clay keeps his mistress,” Barker said, changing the subject.

  “It was a mews converted over to flats, rather well kept up. It had two small evergreens in pots flanking the door, as I recall.”

  “Aye. Now tell me, who can afford such nice, well-maintained flats in Bethnal Green.”

  I thought about that. The answer became obvious. “No one.”

  “Precisely.”

  “So, you’re saying the other flats…”

  “Are possibly kept by other married men for their paramours. Who knows but that Cambridge Road might be honeycombed with them.”

  “I thought Bethnal Green had a reputation for being poor but respectable,” I said.

  “During the day, perhaps.”

  Brother Andrew came into the room. He was stripped to the waist and a sight to behold. Though past forty, his chest was heavily muscled and his biceps the size of melons. His neck was connected to each shoulder by a mass of hard muscle; and his stomach, which is usually the first to go as a man grows older, was chiseled. McClain was a little under six foot and weighed about as much as Barker. I could see why the Guv might have chosen him as a sparring partner.

  “Don’t just stand there gawking, Tommy,” the reverend said. “Take your shirt off.”

  As I removed my jacket and tie, Barker tied the brown leather gloves around McClain’s wrists. The look of distaste was writ large across the ex-pugilist’s features.

  “I hate these things,” he complained. “Gone are the days when you could twist your wrists at the last minute and cut open a man’s brow with your knuckles. I can hardly feel anything in these mitts. Takes all the enjoyment out of it.”

  “My singlet, too?” I asked.

  “Singlet,” McClain muttered, shaking his head.

  “Aye, lad, the singlet, too,” Barker said. I took it off and walked over to my employer to be laced into the gloves.

  I had to admit I didn’t like them myself. They didn’t feel as if they were designed for humans, too tight in some places, too loose in others. I stood while the Guv tied the laces tightly, then reluctantly I climbed into the ring.

  “All right, Tommy,” McClain said. “Let’s see what you are made of.”

  I’d done a number of illogical things at my employer’s behest but none as obvious as stepping into the ring with a heavyweight champion, gloves or no. I extended my left arm and made a fist, while pulling my right back to guard my chin.

  “Pull your left back a bit, boy,” the reverend counseled. “You’re not in here to have your photograph taken. You need the distance to gain some power behind the blow, being a lightweight.”

  The next I knew, McClain’s glove swiped across my right cheek. It felt hot, then cold; and I wondered if I would start bleeding, but the feeling faded quickly.

  “Raise your guard.”

  I did and took a blow to the stomach. That was enough, I thought. I pictured the organ smashed into my kidneys and all of that wrapped around my spine.

  “Ow!” I finally got out.

  “‘Ow,’ is it? There’s no ‘ow’ anymore, Tommy. You’re not in the village green. You’re part of the Fancy, now, and the code says you take your punishment in silence.”

  McClain threw a hook to my ear, and miraculously, I was able to brush it away; but then I left myself open for an uppercut to the chin, which knocked my head back. I heard the vertebrae in my neck pop, followed by a slight ringing in my ear, but after I shook my head, I w
as fine.

  “He’s got a good jaw, Cyrus. That’s a blessing I did not expect.”

  Just then I took my first tentative jab, which, since he was looking over at Barker, he didn’t see until it caught him square upon the nose. He looked over at me and broke into a big grin.

  “You pup!” he cried. “Jab at me, will ye?”

  The next I knew I was in the midst of a flurry of blows, backing me across the ring. He caught me square in the chest, and that hurt, then he smacked me in the ear, which made me forget about my chest, and then he put another in my stomach that made me forget my ear, and finally he connected with a blow to my chin that knocked me boots over bowler, if I’d been wearing one. The old canvas seemed awfully comforting for the moment. My ear was buzzing and half my teeth felt loose, and this with the gloves to make the sport more civilized. There wasn’t enough money in the Royal Mint to make me get into the ring with the reverend bare knuckled.

  He bent over, gloves upon knees and looked down at me. “Are you going to stay there and stargaze all day?” he asked. “Get up. Your employer has hired me to see that you don’t end up flat on the canvas this way.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, and pushed my way up to my feet again.

  “Your position’s all wrong, like I said. Hold your right hand here and your left one there. You see? You can block a hook punch or a jab like this, and bring it down like an axe, brushing away a straight right to the ribs. There’s a good deal of wrist work in boxing, though you won’t hear it mentioned.”

  Barker trained me spontaneously several times a week, and never on a regular schedule. He’d stop me in the hall or garden or up in his garret, and only when it involved heavy groundwork would we go to the mat in his cellar. He’s a good teacher, if a bit irregular, but sometimes I felt the worst of students. I understand what he wants me to do, but translating that message to my limbs had laughable results. I had hoped to impress McClain or at least not disgrace myself.

  “Now, step forward with your left foot, Tommy. No, your other left foot.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Do you need me to paint an ‘R’ and an ‘L’ on your shoes?”

  “No, sir. I’ve got the hang of it, I think.”