December, 1919
The jangle of the telephone woke me at about four o'clock. I peeled my face reluctantly out of the fold of the book that had become my pillow and waited to see whether or not it would ring again. It did.
The lights in the hall clicked on, and Chessie's puffy face appeared at the door of the study. During daylight hours, she was the very picture of feminine perfection, as though she'd been painstakingly snipped out of a fashion paper and magicked to life. In a few hours, her skin would be creamy smooth, cheeks naturally blushing, dark hair flawlessly arrayed in a dangerously modern bob, not a wrinkle to be discovered in her stylish flannels. In a few hours. At four o'clock in the morning, her eyelids had stolen the rosy hue of her cheeks, and all the wrinkles that never saw the light of day seemed to have been stored up in the pillow-creases fanning across the right side of her face. She had gone to bed with her short hair damp, and half of it stood straight up, making her look like a startled frilled lizard.
'Wa,' she said.
I did notice that she wasn't heading for the 'phone.
I took full advantage of her ignorance of the Dutch language and muttered a few choice phrases at her as I prised myself out of my chair, my back crackling in protest, and pushed past her to the hall table. The receiver was cold. Colder than the carpeted floor, certainly. I had never been the sort to receive premonitions, but perhaps that was one. It was a trunk call.
'Halloa?' I muttered peevishly into the receiver.
'Meg? Is that you?'
The voice coming through the earpiece was tired and strained and thick with tears. It was female. I shook myself a little further awake and pressed the earpiece closer. 'Yes, who is this?'
'Oh, thank God. Meg, I'm terribly sorry, I know it's late...'
'Early, actually,' I corrected, squinting at the clock beside the telephone. 'Who is this?'
'It's Clare. Oh, Meg, I understand if you can't, but could you come?'
'What, right now? I'm in Oxford.' She had to have known that, of course, in order to place the call, but I felt she could use reminding.
'If you could. I wouldn't ask it of you, only Quincey...'
Clare dissolved into sobs. I felt Chessie at my elbow and glanced over to see her eyebrows pulled into a question. I held up a finger.
'Clare, what happened to Quincey? Is he all right?'
Chessie met my eyes and widened hers meaningfully.
'I don't know!' Clare wailed. 'I don't know! He went out for a smoke last night and never came back.'
'Clare, darling, we're on our way, but isn't there someone closer? Someone who could come immediately? And have you talked to the police?' I waved a hand at Chessie, shooing her back toward her room, hoping she was awake enough to understand that she was to go dress and possibly pack.
'They said...' Her voice caught again, and for a moment, I was afraid she would not be able to get it out, but she mastered herself. 'They said... They said a b-big woman like me shouldn't be surprised if her husband...' She was not able to get it out, after all, but I got the gist.
'Good God. Good God, Clare, I hope you got the policeman's number. That can't go unreported. But look, you keep trying. See if you can get a constable with some professionalism. And see if you can reach Doctor Seward, and...' The last thing I ever wanted to have to do was tell a mother her son was missing, but it would have to be done sooner or later. 'And Mrs Harker, if you haven't already. Chess and I will be there as soon as we can.'
It wasn't a long drive, not for someone accustomed to navigate the Continent, but the grand old Metropolis was anathema to automobiles. The sun was well up by the time we reached the Harker residence in Barking. Chessie slept the entire way, naturally, curled up tight beneath a travelling rug. I huddled inside four cardigans and multiple layers of stockings and watched my frosty breath glow in the reflected light of the headlamps.
Clare wasn't exactly pressed against the window waiting for us, but near enough. She hurled herself out into the street as we approached and barrelled into Chessie, already starting up a reprise of her telephonic misery. She was inconsolable. Irrational. I could see the circles under her eyes from a sleepless night, deep lines etched around her mouth. Her eyelashes had clumped together in spikes, cemented by dried tears, and yesterday's cosmetics were tracked down her cheeks and splattered on yesterday's collar. She had been sitting up waiting all night.
'Clare,' Chessie cooed, stroking the trembling woman's back, 'darling, let's go in, shall we? We'll find him, don't worry.'
Clare did not respond. Chessie blinked pointedly at me over Clare's shoulder. Together, we two managed to shepherd her back into the house, where she took a deep breath and held it in an effort to get herself back in hand.
'The children aren't up,' she explained in a hoarse croak. 'The longer I let them sleep, the longer I don't have to tell them...'
She seemed in danger of losing herself again, sleeping children or no, so Chessie and I wasted no time in bundling her into the chintzy little parlour. I hurried off to make tea, and by the time I got back, Chessie had her rolled in blankets and installed in one end of the settee, where she stared out the window with hollow eyes.
It is worth mentioning that Clare was one of the most practical, dependable people I have met in my life. A short burst of panic over the 'phone I might have expected. She was frightened. But now, hours later, in the light of day, when it was time for action... There was more to this than she had said.
'Clare,' I said, as gently as I was able. She startled like a rabbit and turned her empty gaze on me. 'Clare, what time did Quincey go out?'
'Oh, after supper,' she muttered. A shiver passed through her. 'About eight.'
So he had been gone for about eight hours by the time she rang us.
'Did he say he was just going out for a smoke?' Chessie asked, leaning forward to warm Clare's cup.
Clare blinked. 'He... Yes. Well... He had his cigarettes...'
I was pretty sure I understood what Chessie was getting at. 'No, did he say he was only going out for a smoke? Might he have gone somewhere else after?'
'No!' There was a little too much fervour in the denial, but she deflated a moment later and pushed a hand through her dark hair. 'Well... No, he wouldn't, but... I don't know...'
Chessie raised her eyebrows at me. What on earth? she mouthed.
I tended to agree. 'Clare, what are you not telling us?'
For the first time, her numb cocoon seemed to crack, and she whipped her head around to glare at me, her perfect little cupid's-bow mouth compressed into a hard line of fury. 'My husband is missing,' she bit off. 'The father of my children. What more do you think there needs to be?'
Clare had a formidable presence, but she didn't scare me. Not the way her mother in law did, anyway. 'And?' I pressed.
She resisted. She huffed and hedged, but finally shuddered and fixed despairing eyes on me. 'He... he keeps asking if... if I'll be all right. And he won't say why. Making sure I have all the information for the bank account and his solicitor and... He keeps moving his pistol around, hiding it in strange places. I'm afraid he's thinking of...'
The last word wouldn't come out, but she didn't fall to pieces again. The numb shell closed back around her, and she sighed deeply and took a noisy sip of her tea.
'Christ!' Chessie exclaimed at length. 'Jesus H. Christ, Clare!'
I didn't feel like admonishing her for the blasphemy. 'Where is his pistol?'
Clare shrugged. 'I looked, and I couldn't find it. But, well, if he's hidden it again, it might be anywhere around the house.'
Like pulling teeth.
'Do the police know any of that?' I could hear the echoes of a vulgar joke about fat wives being motive enough for suicide, but surely the police could rein in their vicious humour when a veteran's life was at stake.
'Certainly not,' Clare whispered, as I had known she would. 'Suicide is illegal.'
I managed not to lean over and slap her. Every paragon of good sense is allowed her off days. At least she'd had the awareness to know she was off and call for help.
'Did you look for him at all?'
'What? Oh, well... I ran up and down the street calling for him for a bit. Then the police came. I didn't want to go anywhere, in case he came back. And the children...'
'Good. Good thinking.' On the slim chance he had needed his pistol for use on something other than himself, the children should not be left alone.
There was no time to lose.
'Have you spoken to anyone else, yet?' I asked. I had noticed that none of our friends who actually lived in London had gotten there before us.
Clare shook her head. That explained it.
'I will, then.'
The telephone was an extravagance. When Quincey had been invalided home minus the use of his left arm early in '18, he had followed his father into estate agenting, only without the travel abroad. It paid comfortably enough that Clare did not have to work, but not comfortably enough that the family could afford to fill the house with all the newest technology. The line was a gift from Chessie's father, who greatly enjoyed being able to talk to whomever he wished, whenever he wished, regardless of intervening distance. Thus, all of the gang had telephones, though Chessie sometimes neglected to answer hers when I wasn't around to do it for her.
I rang Mrs Harker, first, leaving out Clare's speculation about suicide. She was as quietly dignified as ever and said she would be 'round as soon as she could.
I rang Doctor Seward, next. I didn't have to mention suicide to him. He asked if Quincey's pistol was missing, and I told him I wasn't sure, but that we thought it might be. He swore and said he was on his way.
Then I rang up Chessie's father, Mr Holmwood, Lord Godalming. He was at home in Surrey and would be some time in coming.
Finally, I rang the only other person in London upon whose help I knew I could rely at any time of the day or night. This connection took longer. He was often up for most of the night, reading, and I expected that he was still asleep.
He answered with a wordless mumble.
'Uncle Joe,' I told him, 'it's Meg.' He had met Quincey only a few times and didn't know him very well, but he would come all the same. He did know exactly how our families were connected. I told him what had happened. 'His wife is afraid he's going to kill himself,' I said. Uncle Joe made a soft clicking sound. 'But it's possible it's something else,' I added. 'He keeps an eye on Barking. Watches out for particular dangers.'
There was silence for a moment, and when Uncle Joe answered, he had slid into the Dutch language. 'Our kind of particular dangers, you mean? Is somebody listening?'
I replied in the same tongue. 'His wife knows about the book, but she thinks Stoker used a lot of friends' names for his characters. She'd handle it well if she knew the truth, but that's for Quincey to tell her, not me. If he turns up in one piece and finds her arming herself against all of Europe's superstitions...'
'And that's worse than her being eaten by all of Europe's superstitions?'
'That's what we're for. You have to admit, it's a terrible burden. We'll tell her if it's necessary, but until then, better just to not. But if that's where Quincey went, I'd really appreciate your help.'
'Any time, obviously. Have you your automobile?'
'Yes, we came down in it.'
'You had better come get me, then. I don't want a cabbie wondering about my kit.'
'You could solve that problem by keeping your kit in a more ordinary carrying case. And anyway, London's cabbies have seen much stranger than an old man hauling a leather box.' The box was actually more like a small trunk, and the thing that tended to attract attention was that the leather was tattooed with interesting scenes of the lives of the saints. People usually assumed that, because it was tattooed, it must be human skin, and when informed otherwise, they usually assumed that someone had gone to the inhumane trouble of tattooing a live animal. That wasn't correct, either, just as one need not tool or gild the cover of a nice book while it's still attached to the creature, but that didn't stop anybody from accusing Uncle Joe of being some sort of morally bankrupt cultist.
'I'll be waiting for you,' he said, and he hung up.
And I had only just begun to get warm.
Fine, then.
I marched back through the parlour for my coat.
'The gang's on its way,' I said. 'Less your dad, Chessie.'
'And where are you going, then?'
'Uncle Joe wants to help, but I have to go fetch him.'
Chessie blinked at me to show she understood why.
Clare stared with a sort of bleak curiosity. 'Isn't that the one who's a priest?'
'He is.'
Her lips trembled, and tears spilled over. 'You've called a priest?'
I realised my mistake at once. 'He wants to help us search, Clare! And he's frightfully clever. I think he'll be useful.'
She was not appeased. The tears came faster. 'Do you think we'll need a priest when we find him?'
I did not point out to Clare that, since neither she nor her husband was Catholic, Uncle Joe was entirely the wrong sort of priest.
Perhaps that didn't matter to her, at the moment, though, or perhaps she thought that wouldn't matter to me.
Chessie caught my grimace and moved to intervene as I moved to escape. Getting through the door was tougher than it ought to have been. I felt as though I were abandoning Clare and her offspring—unacceptable, even if I did mean to bring back help.
Uncle Joe kept a flat in Westminster, Baker Street, where he liked to indulge a fantasy of being Sherlock Holmes. As a Benedictine, he had never taken a vow of poverty, but he lived simply, all the same, in a nest of papers, books, and inkstains. I took after him, in that respect.
Another drive. Far too much time wasted, though I bypassed the City. Without any breakfast to appease it, my stomach was beginning to complain when I arrived in Baker Street, frozen through once more. Worry, huger, and lack of sleep conspired to put me in a vicious temper, but I did not bother to smooth my features before I approached the door. Uncle Joe had never required a smile when there were more pressing matters.
I pulled the bell.
A feeling of unease prickled along my arms. I stopped.
What had I noticed? A sound? A smell? I scrutinised the door in front of me. No smoke at the keyhole, no damage. What, then?
I turned back to my motor, and something caught my eye down the street. There was a man on the nearest corner. There were dozens of men and women moving up and down the street with their shopping, with parcels and prams and papers, but this one stood stationary, facing me. I lost sight of him for a moment as two workmen manoeuvred a freestanding bookcase into another flat, but when they had made it inside, he was still there. He was too far away, and the shadow cast by the brim of his hat was too dark for me to make out his eyes, but there was no doubt that he was watching me watching him.
I looked away for an instant, embarrassed. But, dash it, if he was staring openly, then so could I. He hadn't moved when I looked back. There was something strange about him, and I strained my eyes trying to figure out what it was. He was dressed in a sombre, charcoal-grey topcoat, open over a lighter grey suit. His wool scarf was dark green. The coat was bulky, but he seemed well-built underneath it, with broad shoulders and long legs. His hands were thrust into his pockets, and an umbrella was hooked over his elbow. He could have been any banker, any solicitor, any student. Still, something was strange.
I glanced down to the other end of the street, just to make sure there was nothing incredibly interesting just behind me. There was not.
The door opened suddenly, and I nearly fell backward off the step.
A hand caught me by the coat and hauled me inside, driving the staring man from my mind.
'What were you doing?' Uncle Joe enquired. He did not wait for an answer before continuing. 'Help me with my things, if you would.'
He turned his back on me and charged up the stairs ahead, leaving me to follow more slowly behind. I found him in his sitting room, which was obviously arranged more for solitary study than for entertaining—only a single chair was empty of books. He crouched over his kit on the floor, rummaging through its contents.
Uncle Joe's Sherlock Holmes fantasy was not absolutely implausible, despite his occupation. His height was obvious even as he sat there on his heels with his shoulder-blades stretching the black fabric of his cassock. He was six feet tall, with a spare, ascetic frame, sharp, deep-set eyes, hollow cheeks, and a nose like a falcon. A few strands of fiery red still showed in his snowy hair. The hands buried in the depths of the box were long and hard and sensitive.
'What is it?' he asked, returning to Dutch.
I thought, for a puzzling moment, that he meant my mood, which ought to have been self-explanatory. Then he held up a string of garlic bulbs, sniffed at them, and replaced them in the tattooed box.
'There's no telling,' I replied. 'It might be nothing at all. He's just left, or was captured by someone entirely mundane, mugged. There was no sign of anything otherworldly at their house.'
He looked up at me with an ugly bronze dagger balanced in his palm. 'I'll do my best to be useful, either way, but I'm not a detective.'
'Well, you get to be one, today. If it is something...' I trailed off, thinking. 'He's had a couple of revenants in the area before. Flesh-eating things from an old churchyard a few streets away. He keeps putting them down, but more keep turning up. There was a poltergeist, a bit ago. And a cut-rate sorcerer shortly before he left for Belgium. Kept murdering people's cats, though Quincey never was able to discover why.'
He nodded. 'Nothing complicated.'
'Nothing complicated,' I agreed, not voicing my gnawing doubt. The ordinary, uncomplicated monsters of the London boroughs would have had a hard time disappearing Quincey Harker without a trace, even with his bad arm. If something had taken him, either it was complicated, or he hadn't put up a fight. Or he had walked away on his own two feet.
But the complicated things could not be fought with only the contents of a pre-prepared box, could not be fought at all without more information than I had at my disposal. The box and my uncle would have to do, for now.
He added a small roll of canvas to the other contents, shut the box, and fastened the straps, and I helped him lug the thing back downstairs. The two of us, both in ankle-length skirts, had more trouble than one really likes to admit, but we made it to the ground floor without too much profanity between us, out the door without more than a couple of slurs against various farmyard animals, and into the back of my beloved Bullnose roadster.
He ducked back inside for his capello romano, the broad-brimmed, round-crowned hat he always wore in public, and climbed into the motor beside me.
'This friend who's gone missing,' Uncle Joe began. 'He served? This is the young man who lost the use of his arm?'
I nodded as we pulled away from his door.
'Shell shock?'
'We didn't think so,' I said softly. 'But...'
'But sometimes, it doesn't appear until later,' he finished for me. 'Do you think he would kill himself?'
I thought. That had been Clare's assessment, and his wife ought to know better than anyone. I couldn't imagine a man choosing to hurt his wife and children like that, leaving them behind without his love. Or without his income, which was a significant consideration, given the work that was available to women. But shell shock deprived men of their reason. It was a sickness. If he was sick, nothing I knew about him mattered; I couldn't predict him. The behaviour Clare had described sounded suspicious for a man not tired of his life.
My knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. Uncle Joe sighed.
'Oh, Meg.'
He patted my shoulder and folded his hands in his lap.
Movement caught my eye. The man on the corner took a few running steps toward us as we passed. I twisted to look, but he had disappeared into a swarm of pedestrians and was gone.
—
For early access to chapters, plus exclusive extras, sketches, profiles, and ramblings, visit http://www.patreon.com/mrgraham