'He needed the money that Smith could pay him for the killing,' I said. 'But he botched the job by doing it in full view, or so he thought, of Taylor, and Smith likely told him he could sing for any true reward.
'He was a madman,' said my landlady. 'I could see that; I would still have given him the room, though.'
'Yes,' I said, 'Stanley was off his onion. And Smith was at the mercy of a madman likely to tell all, or do worse than that, so he had another good reason to disappear.'
I thought of those half-finished letters among Stanley's papers: they were meant for Smith, and I was sure some of the same sort had actually been sent. I reminded my landlady of them, and that Stanley had spoken of himself in one as an expert in some matter beginning with 'e'.
We could not answer that, but it was obvious to me now that those letters were in some way threats. Of course, by making these, Stanley ran the risk of being jacked in himself, but Smith was a wily worm. I had him down as quite cautious in the killing line.
Our cabin was right at the bottom now, passing the queue forming for the next ride. As we climbed again, I fixed on the question of why Smith had brought me down from Yorkshire. I turned to my landlady, who was looking straight ahead at nothing but sky, and again I felt sorry for spoiling her day. 'Why did Smith want me as his little detective?' I asked her. 'Why would he want me snooping among the murders he himself had caused to be done?'
My landlady turned to me and said, 'I don't know.' Then she said, 'You must learn to be smart.'
That helped because it was true, and the answer came to me double-quick: 'Because that would make him look innocent.' My landlady nodded.
'The police were questioning everybody. It would be good for him if he could seem as keen to find the answer as anybody else. That has to be it. At the Necropolis station, Erskine Long was standing behind us when Smith said he would like to quiz me about events at Nine Elms. Smith didn't exactly speak in an under-breath: Long had been meant to overhear.'
The rest came to me in rapid thoughts. Before disappearing behind a wall of flame, Smith had written the letter asking to see me on the same point. He had kept the letter – in which he had put a down on the half-link – in his safe for the police to find after the fire. He wanted to make himself seem keen as mustard in the search for the truth, and in this he had gulled the Governor into helping.
It was the strangest thing of all that thoughts of the Governor should have come to me at that moment, for we were now at a height to see the Japanese garden once again, and there was the very gentleman, alongside Rowland Smith on the bamboo bridge.
Well, I knew that London could serve up no more shocks now.
Smith was pointing to the stream and saying something. The Governor had stopped laughing and was coughing, which, as ever, brought his colour up. He had always looked to me a very fine man, but now, though his body had not changed a jot since I had last seen him at the hospital, he looked a true fiend, with the redness not of Father Christmas but of the very devil.
Just then, the Governor and Smith, with one last look down into the stream, stepped off the bamboo bridge. My landlady and I watched them walk in the direction of the railway station, and as we did so the wheel gave a jolt, and my landlady fell against me. 'There is no cause for alarm,' I said.
'Oh, don't be ridiculous,' said my landlady. 'I'm not in the least alarmed.'
A second later, the wheel continued as smoothly as before, but by then the Governor and Smith had been lost to view.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Saturday 9 January five minutes later
As we stepped off the Great Wheel, the crowd waiting to get on looked at us with envious eyes.
I was coming to the end of telling my landlady, in a kind of daze, as if it was nothing out of the way, that I had just seen the Governor in the garden with Rowland Smith, and she said, 'I know a little of what it is like to live in the thick of coal dust and smoke, and your Governor was getting on in years. He would want something back in return.'
This notion came to me as though in a dream, and I said, more or less to myself, 'He made true engine men eat dog, but even though he hated the half-link, he also needed them. He needed them to take the knock for Stanley's exploits.'
We were walking by the buildings at the foot of the Wheel. There was a good deal of fried fish paper blowing about, and the Pierrot dog was eating the scraps. Everything seemed scruffier than before, and it was as if the cabins around us had lately crashed from the Wheel above.
'I remember how the Governor put his knife into the half after the murder of Mike,' I said, 'with the Captain listening in. The Governor, I shouldn't wonder, set that one up for Stanley himself. He ordered Barney to take Mike off-shed into the middle of the fog, perhaps hoping that Barney would drift off for a stiffener.'
My landlady turned to me and smiled. 'Do you think the two of us should do the same?' she said. 'But you won't drink,' I said. 'Oh, tea will do the job for me,' she said.
'First let's take a turn in the Japanese garden,' I said. 'I think I saw Smith drop something in the stream.' 'Hawk eyes,' said my landlady.
We walked towards the little red gates – Japanese gates, they were, I suppose. All was now slowly, sadly becoming clear.
'The Governor was keen to make the Captain think of Mike's death as being down to the half,' I said, 'and it suited his programme to put it about that the fire at Smith's place might be their work too. He showed the police the letter Smith sent me, warning me of the half, and after Smith's funeral he ordered me to stay about the shed for fear of what the half might do. And this time there was Nolan around to hear.'
'He always made sure there was a witness to hear him say the right things,' said my landlady.
"That is it exactly,' I said. 'It was the same game that his friend Smith was playing. The Governor wanted at all times to make it seem as though he suspected the half, but he would never go too far into the details in case somebody should stumble over the truth. I can see now that he didn't like it when I asked about Taylor's last ride out.'
I held open the little gate for my landlady. She laughed and said, "The Japanese are smaller than us.'
'After all, that last ride had taken Taylor to the cemetery on the very day that Stanley had started on his line of murders. The Governor could hardly fail to answer my question, because Nolan was there watching, but in the event he needn't have worried. The book he took down showed him, or maybe it reminded him, that Arthur Hunt and Vincent had been on hand at the cemetery -'
'Landing themselves in it like ducks on a dough pile,' said my landlady, most surprisingly.
We walked on, following the paths that went under the lights, which I thought of as being all colours, but were in fact only blue, red and green.
'It must have scared the Governor', my landlady went on after a while, 'to hear that you had got on to Stanley in spite of all.' I nodded. 'Now that I think of it, he was like a cat on hot bricks in the hospital.' I pictured him at the end of my bed looking like a man with the noose already about his neck. And had he not at one moment made a bloomer in saying 'Smith has many good points' not 'Smith had had not returned to work since my accident, and had not seen the Governor since being in the hospital. I could not be sure, but I guessed that he would have heard of Stanley's death, and now Smith would know of it too. They would have been glad to hear of it. Now that all was fixed on a dead man, they would think the matter ended. But in that they were wrong.
We were walking beneath the branches of a tree in which were some of the paper lanterns. 'You couldn't do that with gas' said my landlady, looking up.