Tim glanced at the funeral coach beside the curb, its black horses still as death, seemingly conscious of their solemn duty. The black-draped glass sides of the coach showed it was currently empty and the coachmen were nowhere to be seen. He supposed they were in there now, boxing Quinn up in his coffin and preparing to transport him to his funeral.
The funeral! he thought. One of them should probably attend the funeral to see who came. And of course, that would be him.
Tim swallowed. Death, in all its forms, was an uncomfortable business. He knew he read too much penny-fiction as it was, but the ones he liked the best always seemed to be a tale of horror around corpses and graveyards.
The real thing, however, gave him the willies.
He straightened his waistcoat, stepped up to the shiny black door with its black funeral wreath, and rang the bell. Mrs Martin answered, recognized him, and frowned. ‘Mister Badger,’ she said stiffly.
‘Ah, Mrs Martin. A good morn to you. If you don’t mind, I need to see the room where poor Mister Quinn was killed. I won’t be a bother.’
‘It is a bother, Mister Badger. It is inconvenient when police assistants come clamoring about when there are already men in the house at their unpleasant business.’ She had no need to nod to the funeral coach directly behind him.
He realized that he hadn’t doffed his hat, and so he took it off now and pressed it to his chest. ‘I can appreciate that, Mrs Martin. But I shall be quiet as a mouse, in no need of tea or any other fuss. I know you’ve a funeral today.’
‘Yes.’ She took a moment to show on her face and posture her disdain for the entire affair before she stepped aside to let him through.
He nodded to her, put his hat back on, and hurried inside to the stairs, but paused at the foot of them with his hand on the newel post. The undertakers were carrying the coffin through the parlor doorway. He doffed his hat again and pressed it to his chest.
The funeral men were all long-faced in their black finery, toppers shiny and wrapped with large black bows. They didn’t change their glance from their forward progression to even flick a lash at him, but instead marched in slow solemnity across the foyer to the front door, which Mrs Martin had left open. She watched with detachment as her employer made his final passage over his own threshold.
Tim hurried up the stairs, shivering at the sight of the coffin. He was able to leave its image behind as he poked his head into the upstairs rooms one at a time.
Watson had said there was a strange feeling in the room, something that gave him a shiver … and he was right. As Tim passed over the threshold, he felt that shiver rise up the back of his neck. ‘Blimey,’ he whispered, looking around. Could it be the presence of an unholy ghost?
‘It’s them stories I read,’ he muttered. But Watson had felt it, too, so he had said. And Watson was as logical and scientific a fellow as he had ever met, beside Mister Holmes himself.
‘Then take this logically, like Mister Holmes would,’ he admonished.
He looked at the round table in the center of the room and pictured in his mind how the people in the room had been situated. The medium – Josie Williams – had her back to the window; Brent, to her right, in front of the fireplace. Quinn sitting opposite Josie, his back to the door. Mrs Martin next to Quinn on his right, and Jenny Wilson, the maid, to the right of Martin and to the left of Josie Williams.
He moved around the table and sat at the chair Josie would have sat in and looked at the chair that Mister Quinn had died in. And dammit. Watson was right. It was far too close. He had just assumed that throwing a knife was a straightforward affair. But it never would have stuck him at this short distance if it had to spin end over end. Then how? How had she done it? He looked behind him at the window. Even if she had stood in the window, it wouldn’t have been enough distance, because the window was only another mere foot away.
Could she have rushed him in the dark? How could she be sure to get Quinn and not someone else?
He ran his hand along the table and couldn’t help but look at the lamp hanging above it, with its amber crystals hanging down, its shade now dark.
Someone was coming up the stairs and he stood on alert … but it was only Watson and he was grateful to see him. But wait.
‘Weren’t you supposed to be apprehending Josie Williams?’
‘The men at the Traveller camp had other ideas.’
‘Oh. Not as cooperative as the day before, eh?’
‘Not at all. It was a good thing I had my revolver with me.’
‘Gor, Ben. Truly?’
‘Yes.’ He wiped his hand across his forehead. ‘It was a slim thing for a time.’
‘I’m glad you’re awright.’
Watson strode to the window and looked out of it. ‘I see Quinn is on his way.’
‘I saw them carrying the coffin.’ He shivered. ‘Look here, Ben. I got that shivery thing you felt in this room too. Have you got a cheroot with you?’
‘What? Why? You hate them.’
‘It’s just that I got an idea, is all. Light up that foul thing.’
Watson narrowed his eyes at him before he withdrew a cheroot from his inside coat pocket. He lit the thin cigar and Tim stepped back, trying not to inhale the smoke unfurling around it. Tim strode to the hearth and made sure the flue was closed. He went around to the window and made certain it was shut. Then he closed the door to the room.
‘Now, keep smoking and puffing,’ he said, ‘and walk all around the walls of the room. Close to them. Blow the smoke at them.’
Watson’s eyes changed from annoyance to a gleam as he figured out what Tim was at. He took slow, measured strides against the walls, inhaled deeply, and blew the smoke at the plate rails, the wallpaper, the moldings, until he got around the room to the side opposite the fireplace … and stopped.
They both saw it. Tim crept closer just to watch. The smoke seemed to suck through a wallpaper seam. Watson deliberately blew smoke at it again, and once more the seam, like some strange magic trick, sucked the smoke inside itself.
Blowing more smoke, a horizontal seam above the vertical one also sucked in smoke, and, following the path of the fumes, it made a perfect rectangle.
Tim pushed on it. When it made a soft click and popped open, a whispered, ‘Blimey,’ passed his lips. He barely believed it would prove to be true. Warily, he walked through the secret doorway to the next room … which had been the nursery.
The cheroot hung flaccidly from Watson’s lips as he gawped. ‘I missed that entirely.’
‘There’s always a logical explanation, ain’t there?’ And now he honestly believed it to be true.
‘Not a ghost, then.’ Watson looked relieved.
‘So this is the passage between the nursery and the nanny’s room. Makes sense.’
‘Does it? What’s this?’ Watson knelt and ran his hand up the side of the jamb. ‘Look at this, Tim.’
Tim knelt beside him and looked where Watson pointed. The wallpaper had torn at the edge, but it wasn’t an old tear. It was recent. The wallpaper paste had yellowed at the other edges, but not this tear. It was whiter.
Badger rose again. ‘I think we need to ask if Mrs Martin or Jenny Wilson knew of this passage.’
‘Surely they did.’
‘Not if there was no Mrs Quinn or baby about.’
‘Right.’ Watson stood and looked about the room. He approached the hearth and carefully tamped the end of the cheroot on the stone, putting it out before stuffing it back into his coat pocket.
‘We’d best go to it now,’ said Tim.
They went together down the steps, found the bell rope in the now empty parlor, and pulled it. Tim wanted to go directly to the kitchen but Watson shook his head, saying with that gesture that it wasn’t proper for them to do so. Tim thought about Mister Holmes and supposed that was probably true. Servants came to them, didn’t they? It was going to be difficult remembering that.
When Mrs Martin entered the room, she looked none too pleased at being summoned. She grasped her hands together in front of her so tightly that the fingers whitened.
‘Can you get Jenny Wilson, too, Mrs Martin?’ said Tim.
She pruned her mouth, yanked on the bell rope again, and waited. It wasn’t long till Jenny Wilson came up the back stairs looking perplexed.
‘We have a question to ask the two of you,’ said Tim. ‘Were either of you aware of the hidden door between the nursery and the nanny’s room?’
For a moment Martin lost her stiff expression, and her eyes widened. ‘A hidden door?’
Jenny Wilson gasped. ‘I ain’t never heard of such a thing. Have you, Mrs Martin?’
The housekeeper had composed herself again. ‘I have not.’
‘So it’s unlikely either of you used that passage lately,’ said Watson.
Martin bristled. ‘Extremely unlikely, since neither of us were aware of its existence.’
‘That’s funny, innit?’ said Tim, casually. ‘You working here all these years and not aware—’
‘As I have told Mister Watson before, I started working in this household a month after Mrs Quinn had died. No one has occupied the nursery, nor the nanny’s quarters, in all that time since. And the housemaid has been instructed not to clear these two unused rooms but for a quick dusting every fortnight. There is no point in the wasted effort.’
Watson grabbed his lapels in thought. ‘Was it Mister Quinn who suggested the séance be in one of these unused rooms?’
‘Yes, it was.’
He nodded. ‘Well then,’ said Watson. Tim nudged him. ‘What?’
‘I’m thinking it would be proper of us to go to the funeral,’ he whispered.
Watson faced the women again. ‘Er … might you know which graveyard they’ve taken Mister Quinn to?’
‘Paddington Cemetery,’ she said.
‘Blimey,’ said Tim. ‘That’s Kilburn, innit?’
Watson nodded, thanked the housekeeper and maid, and led the way out the door.
Tim stood on the pavement before the closed door and looked up at the building. ‘A hidden passage recently used,’ he mulled. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means someone used it.’
‘Oh, well spotted, Ben. Any other obvious things you’d like to point out?’
‘Eh? Sorry, I was thinking.’ He, too, looked back up at the walls of the Quinn residence. ‘I’m afraid what it might mean is someone else got into the room and killed Quinn.’
‘I was afraid you’d say that.’
‘It’s scientific, Tim. Having a theory is one thing. But if new evidence comes along, you have to form a new theory.’
‘Or …’ he said hopefully, ‘… it’s just a false lead?’
Watson gave him that familiar stare that said he meant business.
‘Awright.’ He looked at his pocket watch. ‘How are we gonna get to Kilburn in time for this bloomin’ funeral?’
‘We’re going to have to spend some of Mister Holmes’s cash and get a cab.’
Tim sobered. ‘I’ve never been in a cab.’
‘I have. A few times for the chemist I worked for when a delivery was important. We’ll have to hail one and take it back here to get to the reading of the will.’
‘Blimey,’ breathed Tim.
Watson stepped off the end of the curb and began waving his arm. The hansom cabs clattered on past him.
‘Maybe you’re aren’t doing it right,’ said Tim.
But Watson’s face was shrouded in fury. ‘Maybe my skin ain’t doing it right.’
‘What?’
‘Tim …’ He seemed to swallow what he was going to say, took a breath, and patted Tim’s shoulder instead. ‘I think maybe you’d better hail it.’
‘What? Why?’
Watson shoved him to the curb. ‘Just do it, Tim.’
Tim shook his head at the vagaries of his partner’s directives and stuck out his arm, adding a piercing whistle to the proceedings. The next hansom cab pulled up.
‘Where to, guv?’
‘Paddington Cemetery,’ said Watson, shouldering his way in first.
Tim gave the driver a smile. ‘What the man said,’ and climbed in.
With traffic as it was, it took them a good three-quarters of an hour to arrive, and it had already begun. They told the cabby to wait and hurried to the chapel.
Tim blinked at the nearly empty interior. He could understand the housekeeper and the maid staying behind. Who would pay for their cab? And further, they had to prepare refreshments for the reading of the will. Servants were always busy with something, he reckoned.
They found a seat in the back, and Tim was trying to remember the last time he’d set foot in a church. It had been longer than a year. Maybe longer than two. And it had probably been a funeral, too, come to think of it. A chap he knew from the old parish. Got himself knifed in the gut trying to rob someone. The people he knew …
He glanced at Watson, the most dignified friend he’d ever had. Loyal. Honest. He’d never rob anyone. Watson was definitely a better class of person than those fellows he grew up with in Shadwell. He had no doubt in his mind, from the moment he met him, how they’d work together. And hadn’t it all proved true? Eventually. There was no call for those cabbies to turn their nose up at him because of his skin color, for it hadn’t taken him long to figure out why Ben had been cross. That made no sense. He looked as proper as Tim did in his new clothes.
Tim counted no more than a handful of men in the chapel. Businessmen perhaps? But then he heard a step at the door.
He elbowed Watson and when he looked, a scowl bloomed on his face.
Ellsie bloomin’ Littleton.