The Harvest Man (20 page)

“So,” he said at last. “Do y’think this Ridgway fellow ever got his cuff links before his mum was offed?”

“Could be,” Hammersmith said. “Or it could be that someone took them from the mother before she was killed. Either way, it looks more and more like a clue after all.”

“Thanks to you, Mr Parks,” Fiona said.

The hatter smiled at her, but he didn’t look happy.

“I’d hate to think she was killed just ’cause someone wanted a cuff link. What an ’orrible waste that’d be.”

Hammersmith sipped at his teacup full of whiskey, his nose full of the fumes. He watched as Fiona pretended to drink, but she set the cup quickly back down and made a face. He stifled a laugh and stood up.

“We’ve bothered you enough today,” he said. “And Miss Kingsley’s got an appointment that I’ve kept her away from all morning. Thank you very much for your help, Mr Parks.”

The hatter stood, too, and shook Hammersmith’s hand. “If there’s anything else, please don’t hesitate to drop in on me. I hope you catch this blackguard. Anyone who’d do that to a woman over a coupla pieces of silver . . .”

“Actually,” Fiona said, “I did have one more question, if you don’t mind, sir.”

“Not at all, young lady. What can I do for you?”

“Earlier you said you have a selection of walking sticks? Canes?”

“I do. Not many, but a few. It’s a sideline, you know.”

“Of course. I was wondering if I could take a look at them.”

“You don’t think any of ’em were used for . . . used for murder.”

“Oh, no,” Fiona said. “Strictly personal reasons. Not related at all.”

Parks’s face resumed its natural friendly expression and he motioned for her to follow, talking over his shoulder as he led the way out of the cozy little back room. “As I said, not many of ’em, but what I’ve got’s quality stuff. Did you have a price in mind?”

“I have two crowns.”

“Let’s see what we can do for that. And I haven’t told you the story of the goat on the train tracks yet. I promised you that, didn’t I?” Their voices faded, but Hammersmith lingered for a moment by the fire.

He nodded to the hatter’s daughter as she reappeared to pick up the crockery and the leftover scones. She blushed and hurried away and, embarrassed, Hammersmith hurried after Fiona.

H
atty Pitt finally kicked the last loop of rope from her hips down past her knees and ankles and off the tips of her toes. She was now able to buck her body up and down, loosening the ropes around her waist and chest. She hadn’t seen or heard a thing from the world outside the bedroom since her faceless husband had been dragged past her door and away down the stairs. She worked her body up and down, from side to side, patiently inching her way up toward the wall behind her bed. At last her head touched the wall and she kept thrashing,
gently
thrashing, careful not to make too much noise. Whoever had taken John Charles’s face away, whoever was wearing the plague mask, could come back at any moment to do the same to her. Her neck bent, and bent further as she pushed against the wall, and began to burn with pain. She tried moving diagonally now across the bed. At first she hardly moved at all, and she almost gave up. Her stomach hurt, the muscles clenched and sore, the back of her head hurt, her calves and ankles hurt. But she persevered. Gradually, her neck became more comfortable and she noticed there was slack in the ropes that she hadn’t realized was there. She kept up her steady movements until she was able to roll from one side of the bed to the other. And then she stopped and began worming down the length of the bed, undulating from the waist, not caring that her skirts were riding up. If Eugenia Merrilow was willing to show the world everything, then Hatty Pitt could, by God, abandon modesty long enough to save her own life. She willed herself to flow from the top of the bed like a force of nature, like a stream that had been dammed and was now free, she was a body of water in the shape of a woman. The ropes dragged painfully up and over her breasts, but she kept moving. She tucked in her chin and closed her eyes and ignored the pain in her nose as it was tugged up and out of place. She heard it pop and felt a spurt of blood. She kept moving. Then she could taste the blood, spilling over her lips, down her chin and her throat. Blood soaked the ropes and trailed back into her eyes and her hair. Still she kept moving. And then the ropes were gone.

She sat up.

She swung her legs off the bed and tiptoed to the escritoire next to her bedroom door and opened it slowly, thankful that John Charles had kept the hinges oiled. There was still blood in her eyes and she blinked rapidly, trying to see through intermittent slits, her eyelashes painting her vision red. She groped about until she found a clean cloth and wiped her eyes with it, then pressed it to her nose while she found another cloth. The first cloth was soaked now and she threw it on the floor, squeezed the fresh cloth against her nostrils, and held it there.

Barefoot, she moved silently to the door and stuck her head out, looked both ways up and down the empty landing. She crept without breathing, willing herself invisible, pretending she was not, in fact, moving at all, only drifting on air, to the stairs and down them, letting the gentle pull of gravity dictate the speed of her progress. A feather on a light breeze.

At the bottom of the steps, she had only to make a ninety-degree turn to the left and she would practically be at the front door. She would be out on the street in an instant; she could find help. Instead, she turned right, stopped, and stared down the length of the hallway. She moved her hand away from her face. The cloth stayed behind, stuck there, blood already drying along her upper lip and on her cheeks, and she wrenched it painfully away, ignoring the sparks she saw in her peripheral vision. There was a lot of blood on the cloth, but she could still see clean patches between the liquid red and she hoped that meant the bleeding had slowed. She turned the cloth over and applied pressure once more to her throbbing nose. She could hear someone talking at the end of the passage, low melodic whispers, and she listened. A man was in her kitchen; he was singing. She couldn’t make out the words and so she crept down the passage and peered around the doorjamb.

For years to come, the scene she saw at her kitchen table would return to haunt her dreams. The small man, his sweaty hair plastered across his forehead, sat with his back partially to her. She was looking at his profile, his narrow nose and jutting chin. Part of his ear was missing and the skin had grown back in a shiny pink smooth ridge over the cartilage. There was a plate in front of him piled with the biscuits Hatty had baked the evening before, crumbs scattered all over the table and on the floor at his feet, where his boots had spread mucky streaks and clods of soil. This little man was singing, though his mouth was full, and he sprayed bits of mashed dough out onto himself and the table. She thought she recognized the song, but it was hard to make it out through his mouthful of stale biscuit.

. . . But there was one of the children

Who could not join in the play

And a little beggar maiden

Watched for him day by day.

He paused to swallow and crammed another biscuit whole into his mouth, munched, and sang. An old-fashioned plague mask rested on the floor by his feet, propped up against a leg of his chair, and there was a wicked-looking knife on the table within easy reach. Hatty had avoided looking at the other end of the table, though she knew what she’d see there. She could almost make it out already, from the corner of her eye. Finally, she tore her gaze away from the singing man . . .

She came again to the garden;

She saw the children play.

But the little white face had vanished,

The little feet gone away.

John Charles was propped upright in his chair, his arms leaning casually on the table. There was a place setting in front of him, a single untouched biscuit on his plate. His skull grinned across at the singing man, a rapt audience of one. Pink streaks of blood were smeared across the pale bone, and ragged bits of flesh hung off his neck down around his exposed spine like some grotesque collar.

Still the little man sang:

She crept away to her corner

Down by the murky stream.

And the pale pale face in the garden

Shown through her restless dream.

Hatty couldn’t help herself. She gasped. The man stopped singing immediately, the words of his song: . . .
through her restless dream
, echoing in the empty kitchen, and he swung his head round to stare at her, his cheeks bulging with biscuits.

And then he was on his feet, the curved knife in his hand, his chair thrown back against the wall. Hatty dropped the cloth from her face and watched it for one frozen moment as it fluttered to the floor, then she turned and ran. She heard her feet slapping against the hardwood and—it sounded like he was right behind her, catching up to her—the
clomp-clomp-clomp
of the little man’s heavy boots. Inanely, she thought about the dirt chunking off his boots, how hard she would have to work to clean the floor. She rounded the bottom of the staircase and there was an opportunity to look back, to see how close the man was, but she didn’t. She focused instead on the front door and she didn’t break her stride, though she could feel that her nose was gushing again, blood coursing in rivulets, splashing off her chest, spattering against the ground. She slipped on her blood, but reached out for the newel post and caught her balance and then she banged straight into the closed door and scrabbled for the knob. Behind her, somewhere back in the passage between this door and the kitchen, she heard a strange barking noise. She had seen a seal once at the circus, when she was a little girl. It had sounded like this. But she didn’t turn to see why there was a seal in her house. She concentrated on turning the doorknob, which seemed to revolve in slow motion, slick with her blood, and then the door was swinging open and she was through it and it was raining on her. Rain was smashing into her forehead and into her eyes. It felt wonderful and cool.

She left her door wide open, ran and kept running, blind in the rain and the haze and the pounding of her heart, beating so fast, until she slammed pell-mell into the side of a horse and heard a man’s voice yell, “Whoa!” And Hatty fell unconscious beside a skidding carriage in the middle of the road.

T
he Harvest Man watched the Woman Who Was Not His Mother leave the house. Some part of him noted that she had forgotten to close the front door behind her. But he couldn’t focus on her or the door because he was choking. He knew he ought not to have run from the kitchen with his mouth still full of biscuits. He should have sat and waited until he could swallow, perhaps taken a sip of water, before following the woman. She was small. He could have easily caught her before she went too far from the house. But he’d rushed things and now he would die here in the hallway. He supposed he deserved it because he’d been rude and left the table. Children mustn’t forget their manners.

All of this flitted through his mind in the first seconds after the woman left him, and then blind panic took over as he tried to breathe. He dropped to his knees, his vision fuzzing out at the edges, darkness moving in. His chest convulsed and he crawled into the kitchen, moving on instinct, unable to think clearly. There was the Man Who Was Not His Father sitting at the little table. The man had not eaten his own biscuit yet, but he smiled at the Harvest Man. There was kindness in his face that was not a face. The Harvest Man raised his hands to the man, imploring him silently to help. The moment he moved his hands from the floor, he fell forward and slammed into the hardwood beneath him. The whole kitchen shook. The force of the impact expelled all the air in his lungs and a great gob of mushy biscuit dough flew from his mouth and skidded across the kitchen floor.

Exhausted, the Harvest Man rolled over and lay there on his back, panting, watching the Man Who Was Not His Father and who had not helped him. The man began slowly to move, leaning forward as if trying to get a better look at the Harvest Man, then, more quickly, the man toppled forward so that his head hit the plate. It looked like he was finally sampling his biscuit.

The Harvest Man sat up and rubbed his chest. He closed his eyes and got his breathing under control. After a few moments, he got his feet under him and stood. The front door was still open and he could see that it was raining quite hard now. Everything beyond the threshold was lost in a wet grey fog.

The woman had left him and now more people would come. She would bring them. They would take him away, back to the Bridewell place, where his parents never visited, and he would not be allowed to look for them anymore.

He went to the window he had used to get into the house and opened it. Rain bounced off the windowsill and sprayed his face with a fine cool mist. He hoisted himself up and clambered through the opening, dropped to the ground outside, and walked away.

D
ay had just started up the steps to his home, trying to move between raindrops, when he spotted two faraway grey figures approaching from around the curve out by the park. One was tall and painfully thin with a lot of wild dark hair. The other was petite with straight pale tresses. The shorter of the two had a parcel under her arm and neither of them was holding an umbrella. Fortunately, Inspector McKraken did have an umbrella and he shared it with Day, who waited impatiently on the steps for the other two to catch up, the file he’d taken from the Yard safe and dry under his jacket, keeping company with his revolver and flask.

McKraken cleared his throat. “I don’t want to alarm you,” he said, “but there’s someone been following you, lad.”

“Following me?”

“Seen him a time or two slinking round under that tree across from here.”

Day squinted into the rain. “I don’t see anyone there now.”

“Could be the rain’s kept him away.”

“Well, we’re right near the park,” Day said. “Perhaps it was just someone relaxing in the shade.”

“Could be.”

“But do keep an eye out, will you?”

“It’s what I’m here for,” McKraken said. And he winked at Day.

When Hammersmith and Fiona Kingsley mounted the steps, Day was already swinging the door open and they all hustled inside, leaving McKraken out on the porch under his umbrella. Day also left his makeshift walking stick outside, propped against the side of the house. Claire hadn’t complained about it, but Day had noticed that the thing left big brown splotches wherever he walked. He must be making a mess for the new staff to deal with.

Before he could tell Hammersmith what he’d discovered in the Murder Squad archives, the housekeeper appeared with freshly laundered towels for everybody and Day was struck for the first time by her efficiency and usefulness.

When they were all reasonably dry and Hammersmith’s hair was standing on end in a ruinous tangle that they all pretended to ignore, they left their wet boots by the door and adjourned to the sitting room, where Robert and Simon were playing with Henry, having only recently woken up and eaten a late breakfast. Oliver, the magpie, flew over and perched on Day’s shoulder for a moment before returning to the mantel. The boys immediately stopped what they were doing and picked up all the cushions and pillows from the floor—where Day could see they had been building another fortress—putting them all back where they belonged on the furniture. The housekeeper bustled Henry and the children out of the room and returned with an armful of throws, which she draped over the sofa, daybed, and chairs to protect them from wet clothing. When she had gone again, Day, Hammersmith, and Fiona sat down.

“Nevil, I think I may have found something to help you,” Day said.

“Fiona and I have discovered something ourselves,” Hammersmith said.

“Your killer’s name is—”

“It’s Alan Ridgway.”

“It is,” Day said. “That’s just what I was going to tell you.”

“But how did you . . .”

“Here.” Day pulled out the slim file folder and passed it over.

Hammersmith opened the folder (Day noticed with regret that he’d accidentally bent a corner of the folder when he jammed it under his jacket) and began reading.

Fiona stood up and took a step toward the sitting room door. “We found his name by the letters on the cuff link,” she said.

“So it was a clue, after all,” Day said.

Hammersmith looked up, smiling. “It would seem so.”

“While you two sort things, I’m going to check on Claire,” Fiona said. “If that’s all right.”

“Of course,” Day said. “She’ll be glad to see you. I wonder why she hasn’t come down. Surely she heard us arrive.”

“I’ll find out and be right back. Promise you won’t say anything too awfully interesting while I’m gone?”

Hammersmith looked up again from the report on his lap. “We won’t,” he said. “This Ridgway bugger is just as much your discovery as mine, you know. Maybe more so.”

She blushed and fled from the room.

Day pointed at the long parcel she’d been carrying, left on the floor beside the daybed. “What have you two brought?”

“Nothing to do with me,” Hammersmith said. “Something Fiona decided on.” And with that, he went back to reading the file. Day had already looked it over. There wasn’t a great deal of information about Alan Ridgway, but what was there was damning. After the standard physical description of Ridgway, there followed three items: Ridgway had been caught exposing himself to a prostitute in the East End in February. He’d been arrested and sentenced to two months hard labor on the docks. The week after he’d returned home, another prostitute had been stabbed near where Ridgway had originally been arrested. She had survived the ordeal and had described Ridgway in exacting detail. He had consequently been arrested once more, but his mother had given him an alibi for the evening in question and she could not be shaken on it. The arresting officer, Inspector Gerard, had decided that the word of a working girl could hardly be considered unassailable, particularly when weighed against that of the widowed Mrs Ridgway.

Day grew impatient watching Hammersmith read. He stood quietly and went out to his study, where he refilled his flask from the decanter there. He hadn’t mentioned McKraken’s warning to Hammersmith, but he was mildly concerned. He could think of only one person who might want to follow him. But that made little sense. Jack knew where Day lived already, knew where he worked. If he wanted to harm him, Jack could do it at any time; he didn’t need to run around in the rain keeping tabs on him. Day hoped the person under the tree was nothing more than McKraken’s overactive imagination, but he was troubled just the same.

When he returned to the study, Hammersmith was still reading. After the second incident, the case had been left open and Ridgway had been set free. But days later, Mrs Ridgway had been found floating in the Thames. Again, Alan had been brought in for questioning—this time by Inspector Michael Blacker of the Murder Squad—but there had been no compelling reason to level charges. There was no physical evidence found on his mother’s body and, after all, she was his alibi. Why would he have killed her?

Still, Inspector Blacker had made a note in the margin of his report, a note that made it quite clear he didn’t like Ridgway and he didn’t believe in his alibi. Blacker simply hadn’t been able to find a reason to arrest him. He was certain Ridgway had, in fact, murdered his mother and he intended to keep an eye on the suspect.

Hammersmith closed the file and looked up. Day held out his flask.

“You’re still wet, Nevil. Take the chill off.”

Hammersmith shook his head. “No, thank you. There’s no address in here for him.”

“I saw that. I checked and it seems Ridgway moved out of their home as soon as his mother was buried. It’ll be a bit of work running him down now.”

“But we’ll find him.”

“He’s not Jack.”

“No.”

“But you like him for these new murders?”

“Oh, yes. He’s the one.”

“I think so, too. Let’s find him.”

“Find who, dear?”

Day turned to see Claire, Fiona, and Mrs Carlyle entering the room with Robert, Simon, and Henry. Claire came to Day and kissed his cheek. Hammersmith stood and nodded his head politely at Mrs Carlyle, but she didn’t see him. She was busy watching the bird on Henry’s shoulder. She appeared ready to cook it and serve it up. Day was certain that poor Claire had already received a lecture about letting animals in the house. With his wife in his arms and the sitting room full to bursting with people, Day felt a sense of comfort come over him that he hadn’t felt in months. Perhaps a full staff of servants would mean more company in the house. And perhaps more company was exactly what he and his wife needed.

“Nevil and I were just discussing business,” he said. “Mum, have you met Nevil?”

“No,” Mrs Carlyle said. She tore her eyes off Oliver and took a step back when she saw Hammersmith. “What’s happened to you, young man? Did you fall into a rubbish cart? You’re a mess.”

Hammersmith smiled weakly. “It’s raining?”

“It is raining,” Henry said. “We can’t go outside anymore today or we’ll get messy, too.”

“Claire, run and fetch this boy a clean shirt,” Mrs Carlyle said. “One of Walter’s. I’m sure there’s nothing we can do about his hair.”

“Oh, no, thank you,” Hammersmith said. “I don’t need a shirt. This one’ll be fine. It’ll dry.”

“There’s a soup stain on your sleeve. That’s already dried, unless I’m mistaken.”

“I’ve only recently had that stain pointed out to me.”

Day sighed and moved to change the subject. His mother-in-law was merciless. “What have you been doing today?”

“Your wife has been staring out the window and writing doggerel,” Mrs Carlyle said. “Time well spent.” By the expression on Claire’s face, Mrs Carlyle’s sarcasm was not lost on her daughter.

“The boys have had a nice morning,” Claire said. “Haven’t you?”

Robert and Simon nodded in unison. They were standing side by side just inside the door, staring down at their shoes, suddenly shy in the presence of so many people. Simon perked up, though, and pointed at the parcel on the floor.

“What’s that?”

“Oh, no,” Fiona said. “I should have thought to bring the two of you something.”

“But you didn’t even meet us until just now,” Robert said. “How would you think to bring us gifts?”

“Just the same. I knew I was going to meet you today. I promise I’ll make it up to you both.”

“But what is it?”

“Simon,” Robert said. “It’s not our business what it is.”

“It’s all right,” Fiona said. “That’s a gift for Mr Day.”

“For me?”

“You can open it now, if you’d like.”

Day shot an inquiring look at Hammersmith, who shrugged. “As I said, it’s all her doing,” Hammersmith said.

He bent and picked up the parcel, handed it over to Day. It was cylindrical, four feet long, and Day already had a feeling he knew what it might be.

“You shouldn’t have,” he said.

“You’ve been very kind to me,” Fiona said. “I only wanted to do something nice to pay you back. After all, I spent months under your roof.”

“The whole time helping Claire.”

“Still, you were patient about the disruption.”

At the word
disruption
, Day’s gaze went unconsciously to Claire’s mother, who was standing back, still eyeing Hammersmith with poorly concealed distaste. Still, she had put her hand on little Simon’s shoulder, giving the anxious boy a half hug.

“Open it,” Robert said. He seemed excited, though the gift was not for him, and Day realized that this was a welcome good surprise, a balance, in some small way, against the horrific events of the past couple of days.

He smiled at the boys and tore the wrapping from the tube. He upended the parcel and a dark polished walking stick slid out into his hand. He tossed the empty tube on the sofa and held the cane up, admiring the way the light picked up deep red highlights in the wood. The end of it was capped with a simple silver knob.

“That’s very . . .” he said. He had to stop and collect himself. “You’re too kind, Fiona. Really, I can’t accept it. It’s too much.”

“It was far less than you might think. The man who sold it to me got it for a song, he said, and he let me have it for almost nothing. Please, do take it. You need a new one.”

“You do need it,” Claire said.

“What, you don’t like the tree branch I’m using now?”

“Open it,” Fiona said.

“But I did open it.”

“No, twist the handle and pull.”

Perplexed, Day did as he was told. There was the sound of ringing metal and the sharp scent of sparks and he pulled out a rapier from the inside of the cane.

“It’s a sword stick!”

“I want one,” Robert said.

“I want one, too,” Simon said.

“You’re always in danger, it seems,” Fiona said, “and perhaps this might come in handy. It was the only one of its kind that the man had.”

“Walter’s liable to stab himself in the foot with that,” Claire said. But she was smiling.

“Thank you very much, Fiona,” Day said. “You’re terribly thoughtful.”

“I have something for you, too,” Fiona said to Hammersmith. “It’s not quite complete yet.”

“Oh, I don’t need anything.”

“You need a clean shirt,” Mrs Carlyle said.

Claire raised her eyebrows at Day and he took the hint. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment,” he said to the room. He limped over to his wife, testing the new cane. He grinned at Fiona as he passed her and she smiled back, clearly pleased that he was using the thing. Claire took him by the arm and led him from the room.

Out in the hallway, she leaned in close to him and whispered, “She got something for Nevil, too, did you hear?”

“Yes. You know, I can’t possibly keep this. It must have cost her everything she had.”

“You will keep it, Walter. She had to get you something, don’t you see?”

“Had to?”

“Yes. Because she’d already got a gift for Nevil and she can’t very well just give it to him. She’s got to give something to someone else as well, and she chose you.”

“Why can’t she give Nevil something?”

“Oh, you’re hopeless. As bad as Nevil. Completely oblivious.”

“Oblivious to what?”

“Just keep the cane, will you? You’d be doing Fiona a favor.”

“If you say so. I do like it.”

“Then it’s settled.”

“How have you been getting on with your mum? She seems ferocious today.”

“She hates everything. I think she hates me.”

“She loves you. She’s just not comfortable with the sentiment and expresses herself poorly.”

“She’s beastly about my rhymes.”

“I like your rhymes.”

“Do you really, Walter?”

“No, I really do. I think they’re just the thing for children.”

“I do hope you’re being honest with me, because—”

“I am.”

“Good. Because I want to publish.”

“Publish? Publish your poems?”

“I want to do a book of nursery rhymes. Fiona’s convinced me to do it. I’m going to ask her to illustrate it for me, if she’s willing. We can work on it together, she and I.”