Spectred Isle (Green Men #1)(5)
“I don’t give a damn if you believe me or not. But I’ll be happy to turf you out of this carriage if I must, and we shall see if that convinces you.”
“How remarkably belligerent,” Glyde said. “Do you have any idea what you’re about?”
“I’m capable of removing your sort from decent company, if that’s what you mean.” Saul was less sure of that than he’d have liked to admit. He’d been underfed for some years, between a Mesopotamian gaol and unemployment in London, and Glyde looked to be in hard training. On the other hand, Saul was in a hell of a bad temper, and the prospect of shaking this sarcastic sod till his teeth rattled seemed worth the probable consequences.
Perhaps Glyde read that determination in his face. He shrugged one shoulder and, as Major Peabody opened the carriage door and bustled back in, he murmured a smooth word of farewell and disappeared, leaving Saul in a frustrated state of targetless anger, curiosity, and just a touch of disappointment, as though there had been an opportunity lost.
CHAPTER TWO
RANDOLPH LET HIMSELF INTO THE house on Fetter Lane with a sense of deep relief and a cry of “Shop!”
“Here!” yelled Sam from the living room. Randolph dumped his wet hat and coat on the stand and came in to see his three fellows seated comfortably around the room, feet up, looking disgustingly warm and relaxed.
“I hope you idle swine know it’s raining outside,” he said, collapsing into a chair. “God, I’m tired. Someone pour me a drink.”
“Pour it yourself,” Sam said, but made a long arm for the whisky bottle and handed it over.
“Have a heart, I’ve been on my feet all day. Incident in Peckham. Peckham,” Randolph repeated with distaste.
“What’s wrong with Peckham?” Isaacs demanded.
“It’s not Belgravia or St. James’s,” Sam said. “You’re an awful snob, Randolph.”
“I try. Specifically what was wrong with Peckham was a corpse that had signally failed to lie down and be dead, and that’s the second one this week. What a bloody day.”
Sam groaned. “Did you find the cause?”
“Found it; dealt with it,” Randolph said crisply. He had no urge to relive his messy afternoon in detail. “Are you swine really going to make me get up for a glass?”
Isaacs picked a tumbler off the shelf next to his chair and threw it. Randolph caught the heavy glass more by luck than judgement and gave him a glare in lieu of thanks, then poured himself a generous measure and knocked back half of it in a swallow.
The burn of the alcohol in his throat was sufficiently heartening that he found himself toying with a joke along the lines of whines and spirits. He didn’t have the intellectual vigour to make it work; instead he struggled for a second to place the phrase, before remembering that absurd conversation a few days ago with the man Lazenby in the train.
If only more of his work involved sinewy, sunburned, sensitive men, rather than people who lacked the common decency to die properly. He downed the remaining whisky, topped up his glass, and said, “So how was everyone else’s day?”
Barney pulled a face, making himself look more than usually boyish in that minor-public-school way of his. “Ugh. Well, Isaacs and I went to Smithfield, as you asked.”
“So you did. What did you find?”
Barney waved a hand for the whisky bottle in lieu of answer; Isaacs got up to retrieve it. Randolph raised a brow. “Go on, tell us. Unless we’re to understand from your unaccustomed indulgence that you have seen horrors the like of which no mortal man can bear.”
“Nah,” Isaacs said. “That was Wednesday.”
Barney grinned. “Quite. No, today wasn’t unwarrantedly ghastly at all. It’s just...” He scratched the back of his hand, a light unconscious gesture that drew Isaacs’s sharp gaze. “Well, it was uncomfortable. That rather nasty feeling in the air. So we had a look around, and asked a few questions, and, uh—”
“Turns out the problem was in Cock Lane.” Isaacs completed Barney’s sentence for him, as he so often did. Two minds with but a single thought, alternately expressed in the civilised English of Eton and Sandhurst, and a Cockney rasp. “Knocking and scratching. Which—”
“The fact is, we’d swear it was the Cock Lane Ghost,” Barney concluded. “And I know you’re going to say that’s not possible.”
“Well, yes, I am,” Sam said. “The Cock Lane Ghost was a fraud. There was nothing to it.”
“I must say, given the state of this ghost-raddled city, it takes a special gift to spend a day on one of the few manifestations that doesn’t exist,” Randolph added, applying as much acid as possible to his tone. He had had a trying week.
“Yes, we’re aware it was a fake,” Barney said. “Now it’s real.”
“Oh, God,” Sam said. “Are you sure?”
Isaacs had dark eyes, heavily hooded at the best of times, narrowing to slits in moments of annoyance. “Not to say we’re experts like you gentlemen, but we’ve been at this game more than five minutes.”
“We’re sure.” Barney took a measured sip of whisky. “It’s blasted uncomfortable. Malice, accusation, a mood of growing discomfort and distrust among neighbours—”