The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(52)

Continuously echoing behind each of Clayton’s investigations like the distant rumor of a waterfall was the unsolved puzzle of Mrs. Lansbury’s disappearance. The inspector had not stopped thinking about it for a single moment: ten years of toying with the different pieces, rearranging them in a thousand different ways, trying unsuccessfully to make them fit together. And how often over the years had he longed to unearth a new piece that would make sense of the whole? But neither the old lady nor the transparent stranger, to whom she had referred as the Villain, had turned up again, dead or alive. Despite all this, Clayton had done his best from the outset to prevent that mystery from becoming an unsolvable riddle consigned to the dusty archives at Scotland Yard. Following the old lady’s disappearance, he had ordered a team of architects and carpenters (including Sir Henry Blendell, who had agreed to collaborate in exchange for a reduction to his sentence) to search the house from top to bottom, in particular the old lady’s study, convinced it must contain a false wall, a hidden trapdoor, or some other ingenious device whereby Mrs. Lansbury had been able to escape without unlocking the door. But the accursed room revealed none of those things. It was an ordinary, everyday study. The blood in the street, steps, and hallway was equally ordinary and had finally dried the way ordinary, everyday blood always did, regardless of the curious properties it had revealed to Clayton, proof of which was to be found only in his memory.

Lacking any sense of the direction the investigation should take, and tired of going round in circles with the handful of clues they had, much to Clayton’s dismay his department had gradually shelved the case. Two years later, a wealthy merchant had purchased the old lady’s house, and from time to time the inspector would pass by it on his way home, contemplating wistfully the incongruous family tableau glimpsed through its windows, in the warm interior where he had once grappled with a transparent creature. It was about this time that he began to accept that the case would never be resolved, that it would become just another drop in the ocean of mysteries engulfing the world. As time went by, the protagonists of those events gradually began to fade, until the whole episode became no more than a hazy memory. Madame Amber hanged herself in the lunatic asylum where she had been confined, unable to bear any more visitations by spirits, whom she claimed were the only ones that troubled to go and visit her. As for Sir Henry Blendell, after serving his sentence, cut short due to his collaboration as well as good behavior, he moved to a small town in New York State where no one knew of his disgrace, and there, according to the occasional reports that made their way back to Clayton, he ran a carpenter’s shop that produced ordinary, everyday furniture for ordinary, everyday citizens who had no need of wardrobes or dressers with false bottoms. As I have already mentioned, neither hide nor hair was seen again of Mrs. Lansbury. As for the Villain . . . Clayton had not ruled out the possibility that he had used some kind of disguise or other device to perform the miracles Clayton had witnessed. But over time, he, too, had begun to believe that the creature was supernatural. Outlandish as that might sound, it was after all the simplest explanation, as Captain Sinclair had understood almost from the start.

And now, ten years on, Clayton seemed to be the only one making any effort to keep the memory of that case alive. He gazed distractedly around the Chamber of Marvels as the phonograph re-created once more the scene he knew by heart: the captain’s monotonous voice initiating the séance, followed by a strained silence mixed with the participants’ subdued breathing, then their gasps of surprise as the little bell, the handkerchief, and the gardenia came to life. Then Madame Amber’s sensual groans, the loud thudding, Nurse Jones screeching that the medium was choking, Doctor Ramsey demanding she be brought some water, and finally, heralding the cacophonous sounds of the brawl, the Villain’s voice, steeped in evil as though emerging from a putrid gorge.

“I’ve found you! At last, I’ve found you! And this time, you’ll give me what is mine!”

What is mine . . . At least now he knew what the Villain had been referring to, reflected Clayton, stroking the book the old lady had entrusted to him. This was what the creature had been looking for, and he was not afraid to kill in order to get hold of it. Yet if he had wanted it so much, why did he not come back for it? At first, Clayton had expected they were bound to renew their half-finished duel, but as the years went by he realized the Villain could not have known that he was the one now in possession of The Map of Chaos. Doubtless the Villain had not gotten a proper look at him during their brief confrontation in the murky gloom at Mrs. Lansbury’s house, and hadn’t heard his voice either, and so was unable to recognize in that unexpected opponent the inspector who had thwarted his attempt to throttle the old lady during the séance. He must have mistaken him for a servant. And that meant he must be looking elsewhere for the book. Perhaps he believed it was still with the old lady, wherever she might be, or perhaps with the intended recipient of the message the Villain had intercepted. If so, that person was in grave danger, although there was little Clayton could do about it, as he had no clue as to who it was. He sighed with resignation and contemplated the book that Mrs. Lansbury had told him to guard with his life. And that was what he had done for the last ten years. He had hidden the book away in the Chamber of Marvels, a place that, as far as the world was concerned, did not exist, and waited for someone to come to claim it. But no one seemed to be aware that the book existed. And so, whenever he wasn’t working on a case, like now, he would descend into the Chamber, turn on the phonograph, and spend hours poring over the map, wondering who had written it, what formulas those were, what extreme danger was threatening the world, and how that handful of scribbled pages could possibly save it.