The Shadow in the North, Page 9

  She took the fish out of her mouth again, looked at him steadily for a moment, and then released a flood of the filthiest, richest, ripest, fruitiest, foulest language Jim had ever heard. It went on for an uninterrupted two minutes and a half, without repetition. He, his face, his manners, his ancestry, his clothes and his mind were compared unfavourably to parts of his body, to parts of other people's bodies, to parts of animals' bodies, to the stink arising from dead fish, to boils, to intestinal wind and to several dozen other unpleasantnesses. Jim was completely taken aback, and that didn't happen very often.

  He put his hand in his pocket.

  "Here," he said, holding out a sixpence. "You're a virtuoso, you are. I never heard such a talent."

  She took the sixpence - whereupon he swiped her round the head, and sent her sprawling.

  "But you want to be quicker on your pins than that," he added. "Cheerio."

  She told him what to do and where to go, and then called: "And you've missed yer mate. He's just gorn. She told him you was here. Oo's the slow one now?" - and with a cackle of witchlike glee, fled dripping around the corner of the yard.

  Jim cursed, and ran into the house. The only light came from a candle on a rickety table; he seized it and, shielding the flame, tore up the narrow stairs. The smells that met him were indescribable, even by the little girl; how did the fastidious Mackinnon stand it? And the place was a labyrinth. Faces peered at him from the gloom - wizened ones like elderly rats, dirty ones, brutal ones - doors hung crazily open or weren't there at all - lengths of sacking fell aside to show whole families, six, seven, eight or more people sleeping or eating or slumped in apathy or maybe dead.

  But no Mackinnon. The monstrous woman, with a bottle of gin clutched to her like the child's doll, sat on the landing, incapable of movement. He shoved past her into the last room - and found it empty.

  She laughed wheezily.

  "Where'd he go?" Jim demanded.

  "Out," she said, wheezing harder.

  He was tempted to take a kick at her. Without a word, he pushed his way past and left the house.

  He stood in the darkness of the court - darker now, for he'd snuffed out the candle. The house was quiet behind him; the little girl had vanished - and his skin crept.

  There was someone else in the court.

  He was sure of it, though he could see and hear no one. All his senses prickled. He stood still, cursing his stupidity, and reached silently into his pocket for the brass knuckleduster he always carried.

  Then a light hand was laid on his arm, and a woman's voice said, "Wait. . ."

  He stood rigid. His heart was thumping wildly. He could see only the dull wet gleam of a sodden brick wall outside the court; there was nothing but darkness within.

  "You're a friend," said the voice. "He's spoken your name. Come with me."

  It was like a dream. A shawled, cloaked figure glided past him, and beckoned him to follow, and helplessly, as in a dream, he did so.

  In a neat little room not far away, she struck a match and lit a candle. The shawl fell forward over her face as she bent low to do it, and then she murmured, "Please. . ."

  Jim stood, puzzled, as she lowered the shawl. Then he understood. A huge, liver-coloured birthmark spread across half her face. Her eyes were warm and fine, but their expression told him what his expression was, and he felt ashamed.

  "Sorry," he said. "Who are you?"

  "Please - sit down. I heard you speak of him to Mrs Mooney, I couldn't help. . ."

  He sat down at the table, which was spread with a delicately embroidered linen cloth. Everything he could see was pretty in a light, old-fashioned way, and there was a faint smell of lavender in the air. She was delicate too; her voice wasn't Cockney, but had a touch of the Geordie in it, he thought - Newcastle? Durham? - and it was gentle and musical. She sat across the table from him, looking down.

  "I love him, Mr Taylor," she said.

  "Oh! That's it. I understand now."

  "My name is Isabel Meredith," she went on. "When he came. . . When he left the engagement at Lady Harborough's the other night he hardly knew what he was doing. He came to me because once we. . . I've helped him in the past. I've given him a little money. I have very little, as you see. I'm a needlewoman. That he should have to hide like this, a man of his talent. . . But he's in great danger, Mr Taylor, terrible danger. He. . . What else can he do?"

  "He can tell the blooming truth, that's what. He can come to Burton Street - he knows where - and talk to me and my mate Fred Garland. If he's in danger, that's the best thing he can do. But he's got to be straight about it."

  She traced a pattern with her fingernail on the cloth. "You see, he's very nervous, very imaginative," she said after a moment. "As an artist, he naturally feels things more than most of us. More acutely. . ."

  Jim said nothing. The only artist he knew well was Webster Garland, and he was as tough as a buzzard; what marked him out was his single-mindedness and his marvellous eye, not a susceptibility to the vapours.

  "Well, look," he said finally. "If it was any other geezer, I wouldn't be bothered. But we're trying to find something out, not about Mackinnon, something else - and he's mixed up at the edge of it. There's fraud, there's financial jiggery-pokery, there's spiritualistic humbug, there's all kinds of wickedness - maybe worse. So what's he done? And how'd you get mixed up with him, anyway?"

  "I met him in Newcastle," she said. "He was friendly to me. He was only starting then. He told me he couldn't use his real name on the stage - he's not really called Mackinnon - because his father would find out and have him put away."

  "Eh?"

  "That's what he said."

  "Well, who's his father then?"

  "He would never tell me. Someone important. There was a matter of inheritance - a family treasure, or something and he gave it all up for his art. But his father was afraid it would bring disgrace on the family, you see."

  "H'mm," said Jim, profoundly sceptical. "And what about this Bellmann bloke, then? How's he mixed up in it?"

  Isabel Meredith looked away. "I think," she whispered, "it might be murder."

  "Go on."

  "He's never said it directly. But. . . He's given hints and signs. . . It's something to do with this."

  She opened a drawer and took out a pocket-book. From it she withdrew a yellowed newspaper cutting. It was undated.

  SENSATIONAL MURDER

  Preserved in the Ice

  A sensational discovery was made last month in the forests of Siberia. The body of a man was found, by a hunter, perfectly preserved in the ice of a frozen river. At first it was thought that the victim had fallen into the water and drowned, but upon examination it was seen that he had been stabbed several times in the throat and chest.

  There was no due to his identity, and but for its chance discovery by the hunter, the body would undoubtedly have been carried northwards by the spring floods, to be lost for ever in the Arctic Ocean.

  The case has aroused great interest in Russia, where the disappearance

  There the clipping ended. Jim looked up in frustration. "Was there a date on this?" he said.

  "I don't know. I found it when. . . It fell out of his coat pocket. When he saw me with it he went pale. He said it had set off some strange vision in his mind. . . Why, Mr Taylor? Does it hold any meaning for you?"

  Jim remembered Nellie Budd's voice coming out of the darkness in Streatham: "He's still there, all in a glass coffin. . ." It is all connected, he thought. The body in the ice, the fight in Mackinnon's vision, blood on the snow. . .

  "D'you know a woman called Nellie Budd?" he said.

  "No," she said, bewildered. "Who is she?"

  "She's a whatsit, a medium. Nothing to do with Mackinnon, except that this cutting links up with something she said once. Can I keep it?"

  She hesitated. He could tell she didn't want to let anything of Mackinnon's out of her control.

  "Well, all right," he went on. "I'll just copy it dow
n. Didn't he say anything more about it?"

  She shook her head. Then as he started writing in his notebook she said, "I just don't know what to do, Mr Taylor. I do love him so much. I'd give anything to help him - anything in the world. . . Everything about him is so precious to me. I wish I could earn enough to provide for him! To think of him in that horrible place of Mrs Mooney's, unable to show himself - an artist, a great artist like him! Oh, I'm sorry. I expect this sounds ridiculous; a woman with. . . I could never expect him to want. . . I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said all that. But I speak to no one, and I am so lonely."

  Jim finished copying the cutting, glad not to have to face her. He didn't know what to say; her emotion was so naked and helpless. He ran his finger over the embroidery, his mind racing.

  "D'you make this?" he said.

  She nodded.

  "I can get you a good price for stuff like this. You don't have to live in a poky little room like this, earning pennies. I know what you're thinking - you do it to hide away, don't you? I bet you only come out at night."

  "It's true. But--"

  "Listen, Miss Meredith. What you've shown me tonight is a big help. I don't know if he's ever going to come back here - I reckon he's done a bunk, meself, out of that stinkhole, and you'll be lucky to see him again. No," he said as she started to protest, "I ain't finished. I'll give you one of our cards, and I'll put another address on the back - it's a young lady, Miss Lockhart. She's one of the firm - she's a good 'un. If you need anyone to go to, you call on her. And if you do see Mackinnon again - make him come and see us. All right? Or let me know yourself. It's for his sake, after all, silly bugg . . . bloke. If we can clear this business up he can go back on the stage and do his tricks again and we can all breathe easy."

  As he left Lambeth, he found himself whistling, for he'd made progress; but then he thought of her strange, lonely, passionate life, and stopped. Villainy was nothing new to him, and even murder was understandable and clear-cut. But love was a mystery.

  When he got back to Burton Street, he paused in the darkened shop, hearing voices raised in the kitchen. Sally was there, and she wasn't pleased with Fred, by the sound of it.

  Jim turned the handle and walked in. Webster was seated peacefully by the fire, pipe going, a glass of whisky on the arm of the chair, feet on the fender, deep in one of Jim's penny magazines. Chaka lay at his feet, grinding a ham-bone to splinters and taking up half the floor, while Frederick and Sally were standing face to face across the table, their tempers straining at the leash, voices shaking.

  "Evening," said Jim. No one took any notice. He helped himself to a bottle of beer from the larder and came to sit down opposite Webster. "I've found Mackinnon," he said, pouring his beer. "And I know what he's up to. And I found out what Nellie Budd meant. I bet that's more than you silly buggers have done. I'm talking to meself, ain't I? No one's heard a word. Oh well." He took a long swig from his mug, and looked at the cover of the penny dreadful that Webster was reading. "The treasure's under Skeleton Rock," he said, and Webster looked up. "The Clancy Gang put it there after they blew up the bank. Deadwood Dick disguises himself as an outlaw and joins the gang. Ned Buckeye - the new crook - that's Deadwood Dick, only you ain't supposed to know."

  Webster tossed the magazine down, exasperated. "What'd you tell me that for?" he said. "You spoiled it."

  "I had to wake you up somehow. What's going on with these two, then?"

  Webster looked up vaguely at Frederick and Sally. "Don't know," he said. "I wasn't listening. I was enjoying Deadwood Dick. They quarrelling or something?"

  Frederick was banging his fist on the table. "If you'd had the sense--" he was saying.

  "Don't you talk to me about sense," Sally came back, tight-lipped. "I told you not to get in my way, didn't I? If you want to work together on a case--"

  "Shut yer gob-boxes, the pair of you!" said Jim loudly. "I never heard such a racket. If you want some news, sit down and listen to this."

  They stood for a moment, hostility still crackling between them; and then Frederick pushed a chair towards Sally and perched on a stool. She sat down.

  "Well?" she said.

  Jim told them about Isabel Meredith, and read them the words he'd copied from the newspaper cutting.

  "The way I see it," he said, "Mackinnon's blackmailing Bellmann. He got hold of this cutting from somewhere, put it together with the trance business, and tried to touch Bellmann for a packet; and naturally Bellmann won't have it. Simple. What d'you think?"

  "What's the connection between Nellie Budd and Mackinnon?" said Frederick.

  "Stone the crows, I don't know," said Jim. "Maybe they both belong to a Share-Your-Psychic-Secrets Club. Maybe she's Bellmann's fancy-piece."

  "And this business of inheritance," Sally said. "His father was someone important - was that what she said?"

  "That's right."

  "Perhaps that's true. Perhaps he's the heir to something Bellmann wants."

  "If it's true," said Frederick. "Still, at least we've got a little further. Did this Miss Meredith strike you as being truthful?"

  "Oh, yes," said Jim. "I mean, she came up to me in the first place. She needn't have done that at all if she'd wanted to hide anything. She's only got one thing on her mind, and that's keeping him safe. . . I'm sure she'd lie to do that if she had to, but she wasn't lying to me. I'd swear to it."

  "H'mm," said Frederick, rubbing his jaw. "Pax again, Lockhart?"

  "All right," she said, grudgingly. "But I wish you'd tell me straight away when you find something out. If I'd known it was Bellmann who was chasing Mr Mackinnon, I'd have had something else up my sleeve when I saw him."

  "It was a damn silly thing to do anyway, if you ask me," said Frederick. "Charging straight in and--"

  "Yes, but I don't ask you," Sally snapped. "You've already--"

  "Enough!" said Jim. "Who wants some cheese and pickles? Mr Webster? How's yer bone, Chuckles?"

  Chaka thumped his tail on the floor as Jim rubbed his ears. Frederick brought out a loaf of bread and some cheese and Sally cleared the table, and within a few minutes they were eating. When they'd finished they put the plates on the bench behind them and Jim got out his cards and they played whist, Sally partnering Fred against Jim and Webster. Before long they were laughing again, as they had done in the old days before Sally went to Cambridge, when the partnership was new; before she and Fred had started quarrelling. Looking at them now, thought Jim, you'd never believe they weren't in love with each other, and not with a hopeless, doomed obsession like poor Isabel Meredith's either. This was what love ought to be like: playful and passionate and teasing, and dangerous too, with sharp intelligence in it. They were equals, these two - tigers, at the very least. They could do anything in the world if they worked together. Why did they have to fight?

  Chapter Ten

  THE WINTER GARDEN

  On Monday morning, Charles Bertram arrived at the shop with some news. He had a friend at Elliott and Fry's (the smartest photographers in London; they specialized in portraits of wealthy people in fashionable surroundings), and this friend had told him of a commission they'd just received: to take the engagement photograph of Axel Bellmann and Lady Mary Wytham.

  Frederick whistled. "When?" he said.

  "This afternoon, at Wytham's house in Cavendish Square. I thought you'd be interested. It's a full-scale job - you know what Elliott and Fry are like. There'll be an assistant under flashlamp holder, a junior lens polisher, a deputy tripod adjuster. . ."

  "What's the name of your pal? It's not young Protherough, by any chance?"

  "As a matter of fact it is. D'you know him?"

  "Yes - and he owes me a favour, too.Well done, Charlie. So Bellmann's getting married, eh? And to that lovely girl. . . Well, I'm damned."

  And he seized his coat and hat and ran out.

  Sally gave a morning a week to Garland and Lockhart's, to keep an eye on the accounts and discuss developments with Webster and Mr Blaine. She'd
come in that morning expecting Frederick to be there as well, because Mr Blaine had mentioned the need for more space and hoped Frederick would back his arguments.

  "You see, Miss Lockhart," Mr Blaine said as they stood by the counter, "I think we need some kind of clerical assistance but, as you are aware, there's very little room for it to take place in here. I don't know whether there might be room in a corner of the new studio. . ."

  "Absolutely not," said Webster firmly. "In fact I'm beginning to wonder whether the studio's going to be big enough anyway."

  "How are they getting on with it?" said Sally.

  "Come and have a look," said Webster. "Busy, Charles?"

  Charles Bertram joined them in the yard behind the shop. The new studio building was nearly complete; the roof was tiled, and two plasterers were working on the walls, but the windows were still unglazed. They picked their way amongst the planks and the ladders and the wheelbarrows and stood on the new-laid floorboards in a patch of thin, wintry sunlight.

  "I'm wondering, you see," said Webster, "whether we're going to have enough room in here for the tracking camera. We'll only manage if we have the rails going round in a horseshoe shape - and then the light won't be constant, either. Unless we black the whole place out and use artificial light. But the emulsion won't be sensitive enough at the speed we'll be using. . ."

  Charles saw Sally's expression and said, "There is a solution. This building's quite adaptable - it doesn't have to be a zoetrope studio. There isn't room enough in the shop for everything we do at the moment - Miss Renshaw would be able to take twice the number of bookings if we weren't so pushed for studio space. Why not put a wall across here - just a light partition would do - and divide this into another better studio and the office space Mr Blaine needs? Webster's quite right - we can't get a tracking camera in here, and we were silly to think we could."

  "But you must have known. . ." Sally began. "What did you ever have it built for if it's too small?"

  The two men looked sheepishly at one another.

  "Well, it wasn't when we first designed it," Webster explained. "But we hadn't thought of the tracking camera then. We were thinking in terms of a fixed camera with a rapid plate-angling mechanism. There'd have been room for that in here. And that's where the future lies - with a single camera. So the money's not wasted."