“I could not eat, sir.”
“No food. Just tea.”
Barker and I walked along the waterfront until we found ourselves in the narrow lane leading to the anonymous door, and then we went down the stairs and under the Thames before finally fetching up in Ho’s establishment. As usual, it was filled with a secretive crowd. The smoke from several cigars and the smell of food made me nauseous, but after a cup of tea, I felt a little better.
Ho came out of the kitchen and regarded us from under hooded eyes. Perhaps “regard” is too positive a word. He is large and squat, with brawny naked arms covered in tattoos, and an apron tied around his thick waist. He has a shaved forehead and earlobes full of rings that hang to his shoulder. I felt like a cockroach he was deciding how to squash. Then he spoke directly to me, which is almost unprecedented.
“You boxer now.”
Ho could speak English flawlessly, but the more malevolent he feels the more pidgin English he uses.
“Yes,” I said. “I had a challenge given me. But how did you know?”
Ho shrugged, which was the closest I’d get to an explanation. He turned to Barker. “Girl is dead. That makes several, right?”
Barker nodded.
“These girls’ blood cries out from the grave. You must find this man.”
“I am trying.”
“Try harder.”
I cannot believe the things Ho says to Barker and gets away with. If I’d said that to him, I’d have found myself on the ground with the heel of his boot between my collar stays. With Ho, the remark merely merited a slight rise of the eyebrows.
“Help me, then.”
“What do you need?”
“I believe a group of some sort is practicing satanic rituals in London-young English maidens sacrificed on an altar as a spectacle for others.”
“Ritual,” Ho repeated. “You mean devil worship. Christian, one God, one devil, neh? I must consult archives. Come.”
He led us through the kitchen into his office, which is dominated by a desk with the legs sawn off. As we sat on the cushions in front of the desk, he moved behind to a wall with a giant silk tapestry covered in dragons and demure Chinese maidens. He pressed a spot and a small door opened in the center of the tapestry. Then the Chinaman pulled out a ledger and settled himself behind the desk. He opened the book and began scanning pages, moving from top to bottom, for it was written in Chinese.
“Give me more information first,” he said.
“The girl was found yesterday, so presumably she was killed on Friday. Friday seems a fitting day for a Satanic ritual. I don’t believe these are serious occultists, however. More likely they are rakes amusing themselves with halfclad maids while a great deal of alcohol is consumed.”
Ho nodded and began to study the ledger as I shifted on my pillow. I could never get comfortable cross- legged. European limbs are not built for such positions. In the kitchen behind us, the cooks and waiters bawled out orders to one another in Mandarin or Cantonese.
“Two young English come in here two Fridays ago,” Ho said, looking down at his ledger. “Both had been drinking. One said, ‘His lordship throws quite a party.’ Other says, ‘Too much flash-bang and rituals for my taste, but the girls were choice.’ Then they place order and talk of other things.”
“‘His lordship,’” Barker murmured, “that doesn’t narrow it down much.”
“Sorry,” Ho said, with a look that said he was not sorry at all. “I will start asking men to please speak in full sentences and identify those of whom they speak.”
“Do your waiters listen in on every conversation?” I asked.
“Only ones that seem important,” the Chinaman replied, giving me what I call his dyspeptic-Buddha expression.
“What do you do with the information?” I said, ignoring Barker’s warning look.
“Whatever I think best. Most of the time, nothing. Sometimes tell, sometimes sell.”
“To whom do you sell it?”
“Alla time question man. Who? What? When? Where? Shi Shi Ji, send this boy to a temple. Teach him to listen twice, talk once. Maybe never!”
I’d run through Ho’s store of patience, which can fit inside one of his thimble-sized teacups, but I’d reached the point where his appearance-half pirate, half temple demon-no longer frightened me.
“Thank you,” Barker said to his friend.
As we were about to leave, the Chinaman said, “The Frenchman quit, I hear.”
Barker nodded.
Ho, who had a long-standing feud with Dummolard, gave a satisfied smile.
14
“Lad, cut along and visit miss Potter at the Katherine Building. Bring her to our chambers. If I am satisfied, I shall engage her services, provided she is still serious about her offer.”
“If she’s anything, she’s serious,” I said. “I’m certain she hasn’t changed her mind. I’ll see if she can come.”
I took a smart-looking hansom, hoping to impress Miss Potter, and left Barker to take an omnibus.
The Katherine Building where she worked was in a villainous part of Whitechapel, hard by the docks and the fish market. I let the cab driver curse until the air was blue about soiling his pretty wheels among the fish offal- strewn puddles, but we reached a liberal financial agreement. I went inside and found Miss Potter and explained that Barker wanted to see her. She put up the expected argument; she was busy collecting the rents. In turn, I told her this was her only chance. She conferred with a colleague and soon we were traveling through the City on our way to Whitehall. She was nervous about being interviewed by my employer, and I explained that while going into his office was like approaching a lion in its den, he improved upon closer acquaintance. I wasn’t certain she believed me. I’m not sure I did either.
Once back in Craig’s Court, I sat her in the visitor’s chair and left her to look about the room. She was only the second woman I’d seen in that seat since the year began. Barker was nowhere to be found.
“Jenkins?”
Our clerk was staring at our visitor as if she were an apparition from heaven.
“He hasn’t come through here, Mr. L.,” he said. “Try outside.”
I found Barker in the bare courtyard behind our offices, fingering a small, anonymous wildflower that had grown up through the cracks in the pavement.
“I’m thinking of putting in a small garden here,” he said, not looking up.
“Really?” I said. “That would be jolly.”
“That way, we can do our physical culture exercises out here during our spare moments.”
There’s nothing I would like better, I thought, than to come out to the courtyard in all manner of weather and do Barker’s exercises on the paving stones.
“She’s here, sir, waiting in your office.”
Barker nodded. Before he went inside, he shot his cuffs and resettled his frock coat, like an actor about to go on-stage. He’d eschew such a comparison, but it was apt all the same.
“Good afternoon, Miss Potter,” he said, striding into his chamber. He took her delicate hand in his calloused one, the same hand I’d seen put bone locks on several men in the year or more since I’d begun working with him. Beatrice Potter murmured a greeting. She did her best to look undaunted, but Barker had daunted braver people than she.
“Mr. Llewelyn tells me that you are anxious to aid our efforts to find Gwendolyn DeVere’s killer. Most women your age,” Barker noted, “are concerned with copying the latest fashions from Paris or compiling a list of the
