A Sunless Sea

He thanked the parlor maid and went out into the darkness. The air was cold now, but he barely noticed. He walked briskly until he came to the nearest cross street where he could find a hansom to take him home.

Rathbone walked into his own wide, gracious hall to be told by Ardmore that there was someone waiting for him in his withdrawing room.

“Who is it?” he asked with some irritation. Whatever it was, he was in no mood to deal with it tonight. Even if some client had been arrested and was in jail, there was nothing he could do about it at this hour.

“Mr. Brundish, sir,” Ardmore replied. “He says he has something of great importance to give you, and he is unable to return in the morning because of other commitments. I explained to him that you were out, and that I did not know at what time you might return, but he was adamant, sir.”

“Yes, you did the right thing,” Rathbone said wearily. “I suppose I had better go and take delivery of whatever it is. What is it, do you know? A letter of some sort, I suppose.”

“No, Sir Oliver, it is quite a large parcel, and from the way he carried it, it seems to be of considerable weight.”

Rathbone was surprised.

“A parcel?”

“Yes, sir. Would you like me to bring whisky, sir? Or brandy? I offered him both earlier, but he only accepted coffee.”

“No, thank you. It will only incline him to stay.” He was aware it sounded ungracious, but all he wanted was to accept the package and see the man leave. And very possibly, Brundish was as keen to get to home as Rathbone was to be left in peace.

He walked into the withdrawing room and Brundish rose from the chair he had been sitting in. He was a stocky man dressed in a striped suit. He looked tired and a little anxious.

“Sorry to call at this time of the night,” he apologized before Rathbone had a chance to speak at all. “Can’t come tomorrow, and I needed to … deal with this.” His glance slid to the box on the floor beside his chair. It was approximately a foot in height and breadth, fifteen inches long. It appeared to be some kind of case.

“Deal with it?” Rathbone asked, puzzled. “What is it?”

“Your legacy,” Brundish replied. “From the late Arthur Ballinger. I’ve been holding it in trust for him. At least, I held the key and the instructions. I only retrieved this today.”

Rathbone froze. Memory came flooding back. Ballinger’s message to him: that he had bequeathed him the blackmail photographs in a final irony as bitter as gall. Rathbone had assumed it was a dying joke, a threat empty of meaning.

He looked now at the case sitting on the beautiful carpet (another choice of Margaret’s), and wondered if that was really what was in the box: pictures of men, important men, powerful men with money and position, indulging in the terrible vice that Ballinger had photographed and with which he had then blackmailed them. At least his blackmailing had usually been for good; Rathbone thought of the judge who had been disinclined to close down a factory polluting the land and causing terrible disease. The threat to make public his taste for the violent sexual abuse of small boys had changed his mind.

Each member of that hideous club had had to pose in a picture so lewd, so compromising, that the publication of it would ruin him. After this initiation, exercise of the vice was relatively free-until Ballinger needed their help in some favor or other.

Only after some years had it degenerated into payment with money rather than action. And then-when possession of the riverboat on which it had all taken place had satisfied Ballinger’s own power for gain-finally to murder.

Rathbone did not know beyond doubt of Ballinger’s guilt in, or even his knowledge of, the murders of the boys grown too old to please the tastes of such patrons, or too unwilling to be coerced anymore. He preferred to think that of those additional crimes, perhaps Ballinger was innocent.

None of this Margaret believed, and she had never seen or even imagined the pictures. Rathbone would fight with everything he had in order that she never did. Such things seared themselves into the mind and could not be erased. Rathbone himself still woke in the night soaked with sweat when he dreamed of them, of going into the boats themselves and feeling the pain and the fear drown him, like filthy water closing over his head.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I suppose you have to leave them here?”

“Yes,” Brundish replied, his brows lifted slightly in surprise. “I assume from that remark that you do not wish for … whatever it is?” He pulled a small sheet of paper from his inside pocket. “However, I need you to sign this to confirm that I have delivered it to you.”

“Of course you do.” Wordlessly Rathbone took the paper over to the writing table in the corner, picked up a pen, dipped it in the inkwell, and signed. He blotted the signature lightly and handed the paper back.

After Brundish had gone, Rathbone sent Ardmore to fetch brandy, then he dismissed him for the night and sat in the armchair thinking.

Should he destroy them, now, without even opening them? He looked down at the box and realized it was metal, and locked. The key was tied to it on a ribbon, presumably by Brundish. He would have to open it and take them out before he could destroy them. Inside that box they were invulnerable, probably even to fire.

What else would destroy pictures? Acid? But why bother? Fire was easy enough. There was a fire in the grate now. All he needed to do was pile more coal on it, get it really hot, and he had the perfect method. By morning there would be nothing left.

He bent down and took the key, put it in the lock, and turned it. It moved easily, as if it were well cared for and often used.

The contents were not only paper as he had expected, but photographic plates, with paper prints beside, presumably duplicates used to prove their existence. He should have foreseen that. These were the originals from which Ballinger had printed the copies he had used to blackmail people. He had nearly said “the victims” in his own mind, but these men were not the victims. The true victims were the children, the mudlarks, orphans, street urchins taken and kept prisoner on the boats.

He looked at the pictures one by one. They were horrific, but obscenely fascinating. He barely looked at the children-he could not bear it-but the faces of the men held him totally, however much against his will. They were men whose features he knew, men of power in government, in law, in the Church, in life. That the sickness ran through them with such power that they would stoop to this shook him till his stomach clenched and his hand holding the plates trembled.

If they had paid prostitutes, or even done such things with adult men, or other men’s wives, it would have been a private matter that he could perhaps shut out of his mind. But this was entirely different. This was the rape and torture of children, and-even to the most tolerant-it was a bestial crime. To the society in which they moved, which respected them and over which they had power, it was a sin beyond forgiveness.

The plates were glass. They would not burn. The fire in the hearth, however hot, would not be enough.

Acid? A hammer and blows violent enough to smash them to rubble? But should he? If he destroyed this evidence, then he was complicit in the crimes they had committed.

Should he take them to the police?

But some of those men were police. Some were judges, some advocates in the courts. He would overturn half of society. And if word of his possession got out, perhaps he would not even survive. Men had killed for infinitely less.

He was too tired to make any irrevocable decisions tonight.

He closed the box and locked it again. He must find a safe place to keep it until he could decide. It must be somewhere that no one else could find it, or ever think to look.

Where had Ballinger kept it? A bank vault or something of that nature?

He would deal with it tomorrow. Tonight he was too weighed down with grief.

CHAPTER 3