24

STEPHAN CLIMBED OFF ME, and I rolled to a seated position. He took hold of my lapels with his right hand and, with his left, reached into his pocket and produced a bone-handled paring knife of the kind Rosie kept in her kitchen at home.

Oh, Rosie, Rosie, Rosie. What madness came upon me that night? And what wouldn’t I give to be at home with you now, in our rooms behind the shop, reading my book by the fire and listening to the clicking and clacking of your knitting needles.

Alice was wringing her hands. ‘Please, Thomas,’ she said. ‘Let’s go home. I’m cold. We’ve got what we came for.’

He didn’t look at her. ‘Have we? I’m thinking some punishment is due for all the inconvenience I’ve suffered in the recovery of my property.’

‘Didn’t you say you’re a businessman, Mr Quinton?’ I said. ‘How would hurting me help you?’

He chuckled. ‘I’m in business the same way you’re a man, Stanhope. Only for appearances.’

Stephan moved the knife to my throat, his eyes slightly narrowed, focused on the blade as it gently scratched me, cold against my skin. Instantly, I knew it must be the weapon that had killed Natalia and Micky. It had cut into their necks and through their windpipes, and those eyes had followed it with a surgeon’s care, making precise incisions, not a quarter-inch too deep or too shallow.

But not Bill. Whoever had killed him had imitated Stephan’s work, but the result was ragged and slanted, lacking his exactitude.

I shrank away from the blade and heard Stephan’s ‘tut’ of frustration. He had an exact point on my neck in mind and was impatient to be getting on with it. He was just waiting for Quinton’s permission.

I felt a serenity settle over me. Sometimes, it was that way. Amidst all the turmoil and panic, there was always a part of me that wasn’t caught up. It was my soul, I had concluded. Having spent so long observing my physical self for the slightest slip, the wrong gesture or an unwanted lightness in my tone of voice, my soul had become disconnected from the rest of me, a thing apart, untouchable.

Rosie had a different explanation. She claimed my mind was made of honeycomb, each tiny hexagon containing its own drop of sweetness, independent of every other.

Again, I heard a sound from under the pier. And this time, I saw something too, just for a couple of seconds: a black shoe catching the shine of the lamps on the promenade. If it wasn’t Dorling, then who was it?

Quinton pulled a face. ‘Not here.’ He pointed a finger at me. ‘Bring her with us.’

‘“Him”,’ I said, through gritted teeth, but no one was listening.

Stephan pulled me upright, and a noise came from the direction of the road, a rush of stones like an avalanche. It leapt towards us with an ursine roar, and I threw myself out of its way. Peregrine was in full flight, head forward, fists tight against his body. He hammered into Stephan, who was thrown backwards into the rubble under the pier, landing with an awful crack.

Quinton backed away towards the sea, keeping Alice behind him. Peregrine took a step towards them, teeth bared.

‘Mr Black, please,’ said Alice. ‘I wouldn’t have let them hurt Mr Stanhope, I promise you.’

He was puffing hard. He cast a look at Stephan, who was lying awkwardly on his back, his arm twisted behind him. I feared the giant might be dead, but his chest was rising and falling.

Behind Peregrine, at a more sedate pace, Rosie was picking her way down the beach. ‘Are you all right?’ she said to me.

‘I am.’

‘What should we do with them?’ She threw a look at Alice which would have sent any dog to its basket.

A voice came from under the pier. ‘I have an idea.’ We all turned, and Lieutenant Chastain stepped into the light. ‘I’d like my property back.’

He was holding a pistol, shaking so hard he needed both of his hands to keep it steady. His face was drawn tight.

Quinton held up his hands. ‘I’m unarmed, Lieutenant.’

‘We all are,’ I said. ‘What are you doing here?’

He gave the tiniest shrug. ‘Your plan seemed overly complicated and relied on the truthfulness of a man like Thomas Quinton, which is rarely wise. But from what I could hear you, at least, were honest in your endeavours. You tried, Mr Stanhope, and I thank you for that.’ He tilted his head towards Quinton. ‘My property, please.’

Quinton squared his shoulders and handed him the cigar box. ‘You’ll regret this, I promise you.’

‘I won’t.’

Chastain shook the box, and the sheep’s tooth rattled about inside. He slid the box open, and his eyes flicked down to view the contents. He frowned and took another, longer look, and tipped the sheep’s tooth into his palm. ‘Is this a joke?’

Quinton tipped his head back and addressed the night sky. ‘Jesus Christ, Stanhope. Did you never actually have the bloody thing?’

‘We did,’ I stammered. ‘I mean, we do. Just not here.’

Chastain pointed the gun at my head. He was no more than five feet away. ‘Not honest after all. Where is it?’

His voice was quavering, and in the light of the pier, I could see sweat shining on his forehead. He seemed like a man with nothing more to lose. I watched the end of the barrel, as though I might spot the bullet emerging and dodge out of its path. Absurd, of course. But I held on to the hope of life, if not for me, then for Peregrine and Rosie. If Chastain shot me here, he would certainly shoot them as well, and I couldn’t bear the thought of that.

‘I’ll get your property for you, Lieutenant,’ said Rosie. ‘Let’s all calm ourselves and go back up to the town.’

Chastain stuck out his jaw. ‘No. Fetch it now. We’ll wait for you.’

She kept her eyes fixed on him. ‘I can’t. It will take some time. Give me until tomorrow morning to retrieve it.’

He took several steps closer, so the gun was pressed against my temple. This close, I could see that his eyes were bloodshot and wet, flicking from side to side.

‘It must be now. Do you understand?’

She smiled, doing everything she could to reassure him. ‘Of course. But I can’t fetch it immediately. I’m not deceiving you, sir. My sister has it and I need to go to her and get it back. Come to the house tomorrow morning and we’ll give it to you. I can tell you the address.’

My clever wife, I thought. She’d parley with the devil if she had to.

Chastain pulled a watch from his pocket. ‘It’s almost ten o’clock now. You have until midnight. No later. Return with the Blood Flower during that time or I’ll shoot your husband in the head. Do you understand?’ He pointed at a bathing machine standing on its own like an abandoned carriage. ‘We’ll be in there.’ He nodded towards Peregrine. ‘And don’t bring him with you. Come alone. I’m a man of my word. Bring the ruby and no one will get hurt.’

Rosie’s eyes flicked towards me. ‘I’ll be back with the Blood Flower, Leo. I promise.’

Quinton straightened his hat. ‘Well, this is none of my concern. My man Stephan is injured and needs help. I’m going to fetch him a doctor. Come along, Miss Morgan.’

Chastain stepped back, keeping them both within an easy angle to shoot. ‘No. If I let you leave, you’ll return with a dozen men. You come with me.’ He indicated Stephan, who had begun to emit low groans. ‘Bring him as well.’

‘He’s badly injured,’ I said. ‘We shouldn’t move him.’

Chastain barely gave him a glance. ‘I’ve seen men worse injured than that and some of them lived. Bring him.’ He gestured towards Alice. ‘You too, miss.’

She blanched. ‘I can’t see why you think … ’

‘Now, please. I won’t ask again.’

Stephan was lying against an ugly concrete boulder, whimpering and cursing, his pale hair soaked in blood and his arm hanging at an unnatural angle. He wasn’t able to stand, so Peregrine and Quinton hauled him across the shingle, and I helped them carry him up the steps and into the bathing machine.

It was nothing more than a hut on four wheels. One of the four was missing, so the thing lay crookedly against a groyne wall like a drunk against a lamp post.

Peregrine squeezed my shoulder. ‘I don’t like to leave you here, Leo. I should stay.’

‘No, go with Rosie. Keep her safe. Don’t let her do anything stupid. That’s the most use you can be.’

He nodded and raised an arm as if to give me a hug, but then thought better of the idea. ‘You’ll get out of this, laddie. Don’t worry.’

He climbed down the steps and stood next to Rosie. She looked terrified – I could tell from her face that she had no idea how to find Viola and return with the Blood Flower in time.

Chastain shoved Alice in through the door and closed it behind us all, so we were in semi-darkness. There was an open sliding panel in the roof, but the sun had set an hour before and the only light coming in was from the illuminations on the pier and the pinprick stars over our heads.

‘Sit down, all of you,’ said Chastain.

We crammed together on the bench, Quinton nearest the door, Alice in the middle and then me. With Stephan taking up all of the floor, we had nowhere to put our feet, and had to crouch on the bench like gargoyles, tipped forward by the hobbled stance of our temporary prison. My suit was still damp from the harbour and the salt stung the grazes under my armpits.

‘What now?’ asked Quinton.

Chastain peered at his watch, trying to see the time. ‘We wait.’

For about ten minutes, the only person to speak was Stephan, and the only intelligible words he uttered were curses of the worst type.

‘I should help him,’ I said. ‘He’s in agony.’

Chastain gave him a look of distaste. ‘Good.’

‘Have you ever killed anyone, Lieutenant?’

‘I’ve never murdered anyone, if that’s what you’re asking.’

‘I understand, but a life is a life. An enemy soldier, perhaps?’

He winced, as if from a physical pain. ‘I’m an officer in the Royal Navy. I’ve given orders and taken them. That’s the nature of command.’

‘Of course. But if you let Stephan die here, it won’t be an order, will it? It’ll be your own doing.’

I confess that I wasn’t only motivated by morality. It was Peregrine who had buffeted Stephan on to the rocks, and I didn’t want my friend to be made a killer.

Again, Chastain pondered, before nodding. ‘Very well. Stop him dying if you can. But there’s no need to be overly gentle. I won’t worry if he screams. He killed Micky Long. He deserves all the agony in the world.’

‘Did you like Micky?’ asked Alice. She was the only one of us who might be described as presentable: Chastain was bilious and sickish, Quinton was covered in Stephan’s blood from helping to carry him and I was in an even worse state than before, which one would hardly have thought possible. Somehow, through it all, Alice had remained unruffled.

Chastain thought about her question. He was a man who considered things, weighed them up, not unlike myself. I might have enjoyed his company, had our circumstances been different.

‘Well enough, until he stole from me. He was an impetuous, but engaging fellow.’

I squatted on the floor next to Stephan, hardly able to see a thing. The whispering of the waves became hollow and the revelries on the pier sounded tuneless and warped.

He grabbed my sleeve and pulled me close. ‘Thank you.’

‘Try to relax.’

I tipped his head forward and examined the cut. It was deep, but the bleeding had almost stopped, and I didn’t think his skull had been cracked. I eased his jacket off him and rolled up his right shirtsleeve, which was soaked in blood. His arm had been snapped at the humerus, the jagged shard of its lower part emerging through his skin as if a crayfish was trying to claw its way out.

I was feeling queasy, but swallowed it down. ‘This needs to be bound. It will hurt.’ I nudged Quinton. ‘Please steady his shoulders. Keep him from writhing around.’

He gave me a brief, flat smile, and took a deep breath. ‘All right,’ he said to his bodyguard. ‘I’ve got you. Safe hands, mate. Safe hands.’

Alice turned away and covered her eyes.

I ripped the sleeve from Stephan’s jacket and rolled it up for him to bite on. Then I took a lace from his boot and tied it tightly around his arm above the wound.

‘Are you ready?’

The bone wasn’t easy to manipulate. The frayed edges wouldn’t smoothly move over one another, and I had to twist and pull to fit his arm back together. He growled and snorted, hammering his other fist on the floor so hard I thought he would burst through the wood and we’d fall through to the beach beneath. When I had finished, I tightened the binding further and removed the rolled cloth from his mouth. He’d bitten clean through it.

I took my seat again.

‘He has a concussion and a badly broken arm, but he’ll live.’

Chastain acknowledged this without interest, checking his watch, holding it up to catch the jaundiced light. I wondered whether I could charge at him and knock the gun from his grasp. But what then? If Quinton picked up the weapon, I would be in the same situation as before.

Outside, I heard a muttering and shuffling of feet on the stones.

A voice shouted: ‘I can hear you in there. What are you doing?’

The old man had returned, drunken on my twopence and curious about the noise. We all remained silent until he staggered away.

‘Half an hour gone,’ said Chastain.

I shivered. The temperature was falling, and a light wind had started to blow in through the open panel in the roof. I looked up at the stars, not wistfully or pensively. I wasn’t drawn to astronomy and was free of fantasies about our fates being determined in the celestial realm. Rather, I was tired of looking at the wooden slats of the wall opposite or watching the aperture of the gun barrel, wondering whether a twitch of Chastain’s finger might blast a hole in one of us.

‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked him.

‘Why do you think? The Blood Flower is mine.’

Alice stirred. ‘Can’t you see that it’s betrayed you, Lieutenant. That’s what it does.’

‘A ludicrous superstition.’

A smile flickered across her face. I had once thought her beautiful, but no longer. Now, she seemed more like Peregrine’s portrait of her: delightful from a distance, but close up, the artifice was clear.

‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘Yet every one of us has held it in our hand, and none of us possesses it now. And here we are.’

‘Because of men’s avarice,’ said Chastain, ‘not the ruby.’

Quinton snorted. ‘You must’ve overheard our conversation earlier. It’s not a ruby. It’s a common … what’s the word again?’

‘A tourmaline,’ I said. ‘It’s worth about twenty or twenty-five guineas. Will that be enough to pay off your debt to Petty Officer Fenwick and Mr Hall?’

Chastain narrowed his eyes at me. ‘You’re lying.’

‘He’ll kill you, you know. Fenwick, I mean. He despises what you are, and he’ll keep raising the price for rowing over to fetch lads for you. Up and up and up until you can’t afford to pay him any more, and then he’ll tie weights to your feet and sink you in the harbour.’

Chastain took a deep, quivering breath. ‘You think I don’t know that? It’s nothing less than what I’d expect. Men like me aren’t permitted the smallest happiness without a price being exacted.’ He waved his gun towards Quinton, who shrank back. ‘We love and we suffer, while others profit.’

‘I don’t judge,’ the hoodlum said. ‘I provide a service, that’s all. Lads and lasses alike, makes no difference to me.’

Chastain’s eyes met mine. ‘You would know, I suppose. Was it true, what he said earlier, that you’re a woman?’

‘No,’ I said.

Alice took my hand and squeezed it. ‘Only corporeally speaking.’

I snatched my hand away.

Chastain looked mildly impressed. ‘I see. Does your wife know? I suppose she must. Well, you’ve nothing to fear from me, anyway.’

‘Except the gun.’

He looked down as if surprised to find it in his hand. ‘You should pray she brings me the Blood Flower in time. She has less than an hour.’

If she can find Viola, I thought. And if Viola hasn’t done something daft, like throw into the harbour or bury it as an offering to the spirits. Who knew what she might have done? She thought the thing was evil.

‘And if she doesn’t bring it?’

Chastain pushed the barrel of the pistol against my brow, so I could see it twice, once with each eye, forming a V against my forehead. I leaned back, gripping the bench, watching his finger trembling on the trigger.

‘I know exactly how you feel, Lieutenant,’ said Alice. ‘I’m as much a victim as anyone.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I have no place among these people. I’m their plaything, nothing more. I love and I suffer, the same as you.’

‘You want me to let you out, I suppose,’ said Chastain, moving the gun away from me.

I sagged, breathing hard. I couldn’t abide the thought of dying here, in this hut on three wheels, in a city I loathed. I wanted to see Peregrine play Falstaff, and to take care of Jacob in his dotage, and watch the children grow up, and see Constance become a doctor. I wanted Rosie and me to argue our way into old age together. I had no right to wish for these things, but I did it anyway. What else did I have, but wishes?

Alice gazed at Chastain through her eyelashes. ‘I haven’t hurt anyone, Lieutenant.’ She was using his title often, appealing to his vanity. ‘I am a … I don’t know … a courtesan you might say, if you were being polite. I know the more accurate term. I’m the same as Micky Long, do you see? We’re alike, him and me; we’ve both suffered because of men’s avarice.’

She was clever, I had to acknowledge that. Employing Chastain’s own words and using his sympathy for Micky Long to her advantage.

Could it be Alice, I thought? Might she have murdered Bill? I hadn’t previously considered her as a suspect, not seriously. She had seemed more inclined to ingratiate and charm than to stab a man in the neck. Yet it wasn’t impossible. She’d believed the Blood Flower was valuable beyond measure – enough to buy her freedom. Perhaps she’d realised who it was that had ripped the jewel from her neck. Perhaps she found Bill and slit his throat as best she could and then laid him out on the beach like the others.

Many in the police thought a woman incapable of a violent murder. A woman might poison her husband or toss a sickly baby from a bridge, but to hold another person still and cut his throat with a knife? To them, that didn’t seem like a woman’s crime. But I knew better. To be sure, it was unusual, but I’d seen it done with my own eyes.

Chastain examined Alice, his expression blank. I doubted he’d given her a second thought until that moment. ‘I don’t know you,’ he said.

‘Alice Morgan.’ She held out her hands, a picture of innocence. ‘I am as you see me. Nothing more.’

‘Hmm. Be that as it may, you’re staying here.’ He angled his watch to see the face. ‘It’s a quarter to twelve. Almost out of time.’

I could feel my own heartbeat and started counting the thud of it against my chest, losing track at a hundred or so. One might think I would want time to move more slowly, eking out every second, but I just wanted all this over with. Whatever happens, I thought, for goodness’ sake, let it be soon.

Minutes ticked away.

And then, outside, I heard footsteps on the stones. Quinton looked up, cocking his head.

Rosie’s voice called out: ‘I’m back, Lieutenant. I have the Blood Flower. You can let my husband go now.’

Alice and Quinton exchanged a relieved smile, but my heart sank. I knew Rosie too well. She was trying her best to sound convincing, but her voice was edgy and tense.

I was in no doubt that she was lying.