The Aylesford Skull

“Here at the end,” Doyle said, “he writes, ‘Gladstone will reap the whirlwind.’ I suggest that they mean to shift the blame for the outrage to the prime minister, who, we’ll remember, has had a rocky time of it. They’ll make him out to be a Fenian and he’ll be tarred with the brush of a dozen infernal devices.”

“We should settle the bill if we mean to be on the river at nine o’clock in order to catch the ebb,” Jack said.

Tubby reached into his coat and withdrew de Groot’s purse, from which he took a sheaf of banknotes. “Narbondo has his Moorgate to supply the odd five bob,” he said, “and we have our de Groot, who is a capital fellow, ha ha. Did you catch that, Jack? – capital fellow. He’s investing in our dealings, do you see?”

“I do see,” Jack said, “and I’m sensible to the brilliance of the wordplay. How much has the fellow contributed?”

“Ninety pounds sterling!” Tubby said.

“I for one cannot steal the man’s money,” Doyle objected.

Tubby stood up out of his chair and gave him an incredulous look. “Steal? Nor could we,” he said. “I assure you. A gentleman wouldn’t consider it, although I cannot speak for Jack. But the man’s given it freely, or at least he gave no objection, which is much the same. And I’ll remind you that none of us are wealthy men, and we’ve got to pay William Billson for this food and drink, and also the captain of the steam yacht who’s waiting to take us downriver. And if we hurry we still have a moment to stop at Gleeson’s Mercantile to lay in a hamper of food and drink, since we oughtn’t to drop in on Uncle Gilbert like a parcel of beggars. What money’s left over we’ll give back to de Groot when we encounter him next, except we’ll pay him in coin, a great lot of it delivered to the back of his skull by way of a leather bag. We’ll do him the favor of knocking some sense into him in measured doses.”

TWENTY-NINE

CLIFFE VILLAGE

“I had another of the dreams last night, Bill,” Mother Laswell said, “and it put me off my feed.” She watched the landscape of the Cliffe Marshes pass by the train window – grasslands and scrub and pond water, with here and there a copse of small trees or a line of forest in the distance. Sheep in plenty wandered the marsh along random trails and across meadows. This branch of the South Eastern Line was new, with debris left lying in heaps, already up in weeds and rust.

“The same dream, was it?” Kraken asked her.

“The same and different. The door was there, and the fire within, but it opened in the air above a city street. Full of brimstone and smoke. Things flew out, bats, worse things – the spawn of Hell.”

“The black goat?”

“Yes.”

“Then it was a vision of what we fear, a-coming to pass.”

“Perhaps it was,” Mother Laswell said. “It’s what I’ve come to fear, in any event, and maybe I put it into the minds of others who have troubles enough as it is. I’m wondering, Bill, was it me who put it in my own mind to fear it – to dream the dream? Or was it a true vision? A prophecy? That’s the rub, isn’t it? We all of us carry a portmanteau full of fears and hopes with us, lying loose on either side, and we open the satchel ourselves, Pandora-like, not knowing what will fly free, although it’s soon enough that we find out.”

Kraken apparently had no answer to this except to look unhappy, and it occurred to Mother Laswell that she was being both morbid and philosophical, when Bill was neither of these things.

“Just listen to me,” she said. “I sound like a perfect little whiner. You know I don’t half mean it, Bill.” She patted Kraken on the knee and winked at him to show that she saw through her own nonsense, but it did little to cheer him. They passed a cement works, followed close on by a chalk quarry, both of them hideous blights on the countryside. Although the relentless ruination of the God-given beauty of the world did not make her long for death by any means, certainly it made death more palatable. Hereafter Farm was a biscuit- toss to the south – twelve miles in all from Cliffe Village. She could walk the distance and be home before dark. Home before dark – the phrase had a compelling but fearful ring to it. She missed the youngsters and Ned Ludd something terrible, and the peace of the farm as well.

“It’s a gift you’ve got, Mother,” Kraken told her in a voice that was moderately stern.

“I’d as soon return it sometimes, Bill. Little happiness it’s brought me. Many a mountain I’ve made out of a molehill.”

“You oughtn’t to be so low, is what I’m a-saying. Keep your spirits up. That’s your only man to ward off the humdudgeon. Clap on to the recollection that you gave them reptiles a thunderous great dose yesterday, and by God we’ll do for them again today, maybe for good and all.”

“You’re right, of course. But I’ll tell you plainly that I don’t like staying behind. There’s nought for me to do in Cliffe, but to stand and wait. It makes a body feeble to contemplate it.”

“With them corns a-flaring up, Mother, you mayn’t come along. You’ll be a cripple before we’re halfway there. I don’t mean to take the easy route, neither. It’ll be hard going – in and out, and me back with the boy before sundown, and all of it quick and quiet as a weasel. Then we can find the Professor and take stock of the dreams.”

“Tossing the corns in my face doesn’t mollify me, Bill. The long and short of it is that I’m to darn stockings while you’re putting things right.”

The thought of waiting uselessly made her think of the Professor’s poor wife. She searched her mind for the name – Alice, Bill had said. She didn’t know the woman, had never seen her that she was aware of, but, again according to Bill, she was a great beauty inside and out. The black door had opened before Alice, too, and had swallowed her only son. If it were in her power, Mother Laswell decided, she would get a message out to Alice St. Ives, bearing some small scrap of hopeful news. She could perhaps do nothing about the waiting, but she might about the wondering.

“I’m at loose ends, Bill, that’s the gist of it. You’re certain, then, about the marsh? I’ll stay behind, but I must know your thinking. You came into London in my time of need, without asking my leave to do it, and I tell you plainly that I mean to do the same for you if my second mind tells me I must.”

“I’m main certain of the marsh, as certain as a man can be without calling down fate for a braggart. I knew where they’d taken the boy as soon as Mabel Morningstar mentioned the place of shadows when she was a-feeling of the tooth. Shade House, they call it. I been there myself, when I was down and out and living hard, tending the flocks for Mr. Spode, and I didn’t like it none at all. It’s always been a place for low types – cutthroats, people who don’t mean to be found. Last I heard it was abandoned, but like as not the Doctor has laid claim to it. I aim to get in and out quick-like, through the tunnels.”

“Tunnels, Bill?” Mother Laswell asked. “In a marsh?”

“Smugglers’ tunnels is what they are, cut through the chalk and the water drained off. They’re still in use – and so they aren’t safe. There’s an entrance below the old rectory, hid in the scrub growing up in the limekilns. It’ll lead you to the back edge of Egypt Bay if you follow it, always taking the right-hand fork. Ships would come up the river, and run up onto the mud, accidental-on-purpose, and toss the cargo overside into the boats that come out of the channels along the bank. If they was twigged, they’d claim to be lightening the load to float her off. Smugglers would haul the goods across the bay and into the tunnels; then out they’d come in a dozen places, and no one the wiser. That’s how they did it in the old days, and I can tell you that the old days ain’t gone away. Mind what I say, Mother. I know the marsh, and I know the turning that leads in beneath Shade House itself afore you fetch up to the bay. With luck it’ll be empty, the tunnel will, and I’ll bring the boy back with me. You don’t need to come a-looking. If it’s in me to do it, I’ll bring home your Edward’s skull along of the rest.”

She looked at him for a moment, having come to a decision some distance back, when they were leaving London behind them. “My Edward is gone,” she said. “I’ve accepted that now, Bill. He was gone these many years ago. It was me that kept him alive. The thing that my husband made, that’s not Edward, nor ever has been. When we buried it, I told myself that he was at rest. I told the Professor as much. You heard it yourself. I saw my own