“You’re a part of it,” I said carefully. “I summoned you here for a reason.”
“I came here of my own volition. You had nothing to do with it.”
I confess I was unable to restrain a squeal of delight at his ignorance (though I think I was able to disguise the sound as a light cough). “No, no,” I corrected him softly. “I have brought you here.”
Three people were waiting by the balcony door for their cue. I beckoned them in.
Mr. Clemence. Mrs. Honeyman. Thomas Cribb.
“I laid down the clues, Edward, and you followed them just as I knew you would.”
Something like fear flickered across his face as the final pieces of the puzzle were pressed into place. I cannot be certain whether it was at this moment that Moon realized the sheer scale of the trap into which he had been expertly led. Certainly he seemed deliciously broken, and as I watched him come to grips with the parameters of his failure I found it almost impossible not to laugh.
Despite what you might think, I am not entirely devoid of compassion. Moon had experienced a considerable shock, and even the Somnambulist — he of the granite face, the Easter Island visage — now wore a look of stunned surprise at my casual revelations.
Dismissing Cribb, Charlotte and the rest, I led my guests to my modest private rooms where I offered them food and drink and promised that when they were ready I would explain it all. The Somnambulist was manifestly grateful for the food, but Moon, rather churlishly, declined. He pushed aside his plate and announced, rather petulantly: “I have questions.”
“What we’re building here,” I said, “is the future. A new community inspired by the dream of Pantisocracy.”
“Why does this dream necessitate murder?”
“My conscience is quite clear. What I do, I do for the poor and the abandoned in this great city of ours, for the indigent who exist at the very precipice of society, forced there by circumstances not of their own making. “The ‘edge-people’, if you like, life’s marginalia, footnotes in flesh and blood. The meek, Mr. Moon — the meek who will inherit the earth.”
“Men like Speight.”
“Precisely so.”
He sounded angry. “The Speight I saw last week was not the man I knew.”
I tried to make him understand. “He’s changed. He’s found a better way to live.”
“Whatever you did to him, you’ve done to my sister.”
“She came to us willingly. When she realized that she had spent her life in darkness, Love led her into the light. All we desire is to live our lives according to Pantisocratic principles. And we’re very close to achieving our dream. How many men in history have been able to say as much? We’re going to build Paradise on Earth, Mr. Moon. Why do you persist in opposing us?”
“Because you have murdered and cheated and corrupted. Because you are a twisted failure deluded into thinking you can recreate the world in your image.”
I smarted a little at these harsh words and Moon pressed home his momentary advantage. “You had Barabbas killed.”
“We asked him to join us.”
“Join you? What place does a killer have in Paradise?”
“You never believed him to be irredeemable. Neither did we.”
“But he refused?”
“It seems he was happy to die in the dark.”
“And Meyrick Owsley?”
“Meyrick was placed there to watch over him. Barabbas knew a great deal about our operation.”
“Is that why you had him killed?”
“It wasn’t that he was telling you the truth. It was the speed at which he was doing it. I must admit to being surprised,” I said, “that you haven’t asked me about Cyril Honeyman. It was his death, after all, which first set you on this path.”
Moon glared resentfully at me.
“No theories?” I asked lightly. “No elegant suppositions? No brilliant deductions pulled out of the hat at the last moment?”
He all but shouted, “Tell me!”
“It was a hook, Edward. A wicked, grotesque crime which was bound to attract your attention. A piece of theatre we knew you couldn’t resist. As a means of drawing you to us it could scarcely fail.”
“Are you saying all this was for me? A set-up?”
“Essentially, yes, that’s true.”
“Men have died,” Moon spat, “so that we can have this idle conversation?”
“There’s no need to be quite so self-centered. Mrs. Honeyman and Mrs. Dunbar had little love for their feckless sons. They wanted those blights on their lives removed, lopped off as harmlessly as one might an unsightly mole. I think they rather enjoyed the experience.”
“Mrs. Honeyman. Mrs. Dunbar. Hardly edge-people, are they?”
“I confess, there have been times when Love has not been entirely solvent. We needed money. They were useful assets.”
“Were?”
“They’re not fit to enter Paradise,” I admitted quietly.
“And the Fly? Why him?”
“The kind of deliriously improbable touch I thought might appeal to you. How were we to know you’d kill him?”
“So you have me here at last. What do you want? Has this just been about my humiliation?”
“Oh, I shan’t say I haven’t enjoyed it. But this is about more than revenge.”
“What do you want?”
“Why, Edward.” I smiled. “I want you to join us.”
Mrs. Grossmith (soon to be Mrs. Barge) woke suddenly just before dawn with no immediate idea of why she had done so. The room was silent, though she could hear the birds in the garden trilling their perennial songs, their avian arias, their feathered canticles and hymns. For much of her life, Grossmith had wondered precisely what it was they had to be so cheerful about first thing in the morning. Since meeting Arthur she finally knew. A small sigh of pleasure escaped her at the thought of him, something between a conscious snore and a moan of satisfaction. She reached out her hand to touch him but found only empty bed-sheets, still warm but distressingly devoid of fiance. “Arthur?”
Now, if you’ve any Victorian qualms about a loving couple sharing a bed out of wedlock then I trust you’ll keep them to yourself. I’ve no truck with such antiquated prudery and I can assure you that in the new state of Pantisocracy there’ll be no place for your morality. The repressive codes of our parents and grandparents will be swept away to be replaced with something far more organic, more beautiful and true. Liberated from the cages society has constructed for itself with such self-defeating ingenuity, human nature will flourish and prosper. In the new age, we shall all be as Emmeline Grossmith and Arthur Barge.
The housekeeper felt uneasy at her lover’s absence. She sensed the first faint intimation that the day ahead was about to go horribly wrong, and all at once the merry chirping at the birdbath ceased to seem quite so inspirational. She sat up in bed, pushed the pillows behind her and brushed from her eyes that hard, flaky substance which accumulates during sleep. Unable to resist, she deposited a crumb of the stuff in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully, although, unusually, this ritual failed to improve her mood. She called again. “Arthur?”
The door to the bedroom opened and her fiance appeared, scrubbed, clean-shaven and fully dressed. “Yes, my dove, my angel?”
“It’s early. What are you doing?”
“Did I wake you?”
“Arthur, I’m worried.”
“No need, my dear. I’m just going out for an hour or so. There’s a little matter requiring my attention. A chore I’ve been putting off. Nothing for you to concern yourself over.”
The cool, deliberate manner with which he said it, the studied nonchalance of his tone, immediately convinced her that the reverse was true — that whatever the love of her life was getting up so early for was something she should worry over and, more than that, that it was worth getting frightened about.
Barge wandered over to the bed, sat down beside her and stroked her cheek. “Go back to sleep. I shan’t be long. And I’ll have a surprise for you when I come back.”