“Doctor? What doctor? And who the devil is Detective Sutcliffe?”
“But. He’s upstairs. I thought—”
“You imbecile!”
The thunder of police feet grew louder. Conan Doyle and Blenkinsop ran to the end of the hallway, which branched in two directions.
“If we go the wrong way, we’re buggered!” Blenkinsop said.
Conan Doyle noticed what appeared to be a bedroom door nearby. He snatched it open and the two men ducked inside and pulled it shut behind them.
The bedroom proved to be a linen closet. They stood in the darkness, straining to hear, breathing in the clean aroma of freshly ironed linen. Heavy feet tramped past, grew distant, but soon returned. Both men drew in a breath, and held it.
“Where are they?” Commissioner Burke’s voice thundered from the other side of the door. “Tell your man in the entrance hall not to let anyone leave.”
Thankfully, after a few minutes, the voices moved away and they were finally able to breathe out. From downstairs they caught the cannonade of the police chief’s voice bawling orders, in an obvious state of dyspepsia. Should they be caught, it seemed entirely likely that both would indeed be tossed into the deepest, darkest, dankest cell in Newgate.
Minutes passed. The voices faded from hearing. And then they heard the soft tread of approaching feet. Both men tensed as a floorboard on the other side of the closet door creaked. Suddenly, the door flung wide, spilling in light. The look of astonishment on the maid’s face betrayed her surprise at finding two men crouching in the darkness. It would have been comical in less dire circumstances.
“Thank you so much,” Conan Doyle said mildly as he and Detective Blenkinsop stepped past her. “We were quite lost in there.” He threw a glance up the hallway. The body of Charlie Higginbotham had been removed, but he could still hear the rumble of Commissioner Burke’s voice echoing in the entrance hall. He turned his attention to the astonished maid. “Where are your servant’s stairs?”
The woman numbly pointed.
“Thank you,” Conan Doyle said, and then asked, “Are you Myrtle?”
The maid nodded slowly.
“Excellent. Myrtle, I have a few questions for you.”
At Conan Doyle’s prodding, the young maid began a halting description of the events of the previous night. When she mentioned the steam car that visited earlier in the evening, Conan Doyle fought to keep his voice steady as he asked her, “And did you happen to see the driver of the steam car?”
The maid nodded. “Just a glimpse, sir — it was quite dark. He was a queerly dressed chap in a great black stovepipe hat. I took his card. It were a funny old name.” She suddenly remembered something and scrabbled in the pocket of her pinny, producing a calling card, which she handed to Conan Doyle.
He read the name on the card and gears meshed in his brain: “Ozymandius Arkwright!”
“That’s him!” the maid agreed. “Wot you just said.”
“Who?” Blenkinsop asked.
Conan Doyle threw a meaningful look at Blenkinsop. “Ozymandius Aurelius Arkwright, one of the nation’s best engineers. I’ve no doubt the steamer he rides around in is his own invention.” He was about to continue when the police commissioner’s head-splitting voice boomed up in the stairwell from below: “Dobbs! Blast you man. Get over here. Come with me upstairs.”
Both men flinched. They had to leave quickly. The Scottish author grasped the young maid’s hand and gave it a comforting squeeze. “Thank you so much, Myrtle. Do carry on. You’re holding up wonderfully during such trying times.”
They fled down the servant’s stairs and emerged from a tradesmen’s entrance on the side of the house. When they reached the police cordon, Blenkinsop nodded familiarly to the waiting constables and slapped one on the shoulder, saying, “Good job, lads. Stay sharp.”
And so they slipped unchallenged through the police line and sauntered back up the road to their waiting hansom. They were just climbing inside when four funeral attendants exited the front door of the residence bearing the coffin containing the body of the dead assassin. The two friends watched as it was loaded into the waiting hearse. And then something struck Conan Doyle as remarkably familiar.
“Tom, do you see that hearse the coffin is being loaded into?”
“Yeah.”
“Anything about it seem remarkable?”
“Remarkable?” Blenkinsop squinted a moment. “Nothing that strikes me. I seen a thousand like it in me day.”
“Precisely. Superstitious lot that we are, most people see a hearse and look away. One might remember a brewer’s dray cart, or a wagon delivering furniture. But to the casual observer one black hearse is very much the same as another: anonymous. As are the funeral grooms with their black frock coats and top hats draped with crepe — a uniform consciously designed to submerge an individual’s personality beneath the role they fulfill. Except there is something unique about the driver of that hearse.”
Blenkinsop looked again. The driver was just settling himself on the seat of hearse. Although he was dressed identically to the other funeral grooms, he stood out because of the port-wine stain running across one cheek and down his neck.
“I seen that bloke before!” Blenkinsop cried. “But where?”
“Lord Howell’s residence, the night of the assassination. I believe it was also the very same hearse.”
The young detective glanced at the Scottish author, brows hunched. “Coincidence?”
Conan Doyle’s moustaches drooped into a frown. “My friend Oscar Wilde believes in coincidences. Do you?”
The young detective shook his head. “Bein’ in my line of work… no. Never have. Never will.”
Commissioner Burke appeared with his spaniel-faced assistant Dobbs at his side, satchel slung over one shoulder. The commissioner shared words with the driver and then, to their surprise, Dobbs clambered up onto the hearse and took a seat beside the driver.
“What the devil is going on?” Conan Doyle breathed.
The hearse drew away from the curb and turned about in the road before heading away in the opposite direction.
Conan Doyle banged on the cab ceiling. The overhead hatch opened and the cabbie’s eyes appeared in the opening, “Yes, guv’nor?”
“Follow that hearse. And don’t let it slip away!”
The cabbie cracked his whip and the hansom lurched away in pursuit.
“Where we off to now?” Blenkinsop asked.
“Wherever Dobbs and that hearse go. And I’m dashed interested to find out where.”
Over the next few miles, the houses they passed grew poorer, shabbier, steadily declining from raunchy to ramshackle until they rock-bottomed at derelict. Suddenly, the cab clattered to a halt while the hearse they were pursuing continued on.
“What? Why have we stopped?” Conan Doyle shouted up.
A hatch in the roof flung open and the cabby’s white-stubbled face appeared. “We’re almost into St. Giles. I ain’t going in there no matter how much dosh yer offerin’. I can’t spend nuffink if I’m dead.”
“What do we do now?” Blenkinsop asked.
Conan Doyle pondered. He looked up the long street and noticed that the hearse had also drawn up and that Dobbs was preparing to climb down. The Scottish writer pulled a half-sovereign from his pocket. “Here,” he said, pressing it in Blenkinsop’s hand. “Take the cab and go home. I shall proceed on foot… alone.”
Blenkinsop was incredulous. “Alone? Into St. Giles? Are you bonkers? You won’t last five minutes! Especially dressed in them fine clothes.”
The young policeman had a point. Conan Doyle made a quick decision. He shrugged off his fine wool topcoat and hat and set them in Blenkinsop’s lap. “Deliver my coat and hat to the Athenaeum Club. I shouldn’t be too long.”