The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(120)

“Well, Tom, the performance is over,” he said. “Now that you’re officially dead, you’re free. Your new life begins tonight, my friend. Make the most of it, as I am sure you will.” He squeezed Tom’s shoulder in a gesture of farewell, smiled at him one last time, and vanished from the quay leaving an echo of metallic footsteps lingering behind him. After he had gone, Tom lay still, in no hurry to get up, trying to assimilate everything that had happened. He took a deep breath, testing his sore lungs, and looked up at the heavens arching above him. A beautiful pale yellow full moon lit up the night sky. It grinned down at him, like a death’s head that had threatened to swallow him only to breathe new life into him, for, incredible though it might seem, everything had been resolved without him having to die—at least not in reality, for his body was supposedly now lying at the bottom of the Thames. His body was racked with pain and he felt weak as a kitten, but he was alive, alive! Then a feeling of wild delight overwhelmed him, compelling him to get up off the cold floor, where if he lay much longer in those wet clothes he would catch pneumonia. He struggled to his feet and limped away from the docks. His bones were bruised but not broken. His companions must have taken care not to injure any of his internal organs.

He glanced around him. The place was deserted. At the entrance to the cul-de-sac where the fight had started, lying next to Wells’s novel, he saw the flower Claire had given him. He picked it up gently and held it in the palm of his hand, as one holds a compass indicating which way to follow.

The sweet, fragrant scent of narcissi, faintly reminiscent of jasmine, guided him slowly through the labyrinth of the night, pulling him gently like the sea’s undertow, drawing him towards an elegant house immersed in silence. The fence around it was not too high, and a creeper seemed to adorn its fa?ade for the sole purpose of making it easier for the most daring men to climb to the window of the girl sleeping in a bed where there was no longer any room for dreams.

Tom gazed with infinite tenderness at the girl who loved him as no one had ever loved him before. From her open lips came short, soft sighs as though a summer breeze were wafting through her. He noticed her right hand clutched around a piece of paper on which he could make out Wells’s miniscule handwriting. He was about to wake her with a caress when she opened her eyelids slowly, as though he had roused her simply by gazing at her body.

She did not appear in the least surprised to see him standing beside her bed, as if she had known that sooner or later he would appear, guided by the scent of her narcissi.

“You’ve come back,” she whispered sweetly.

“Yes, Claire, I’ve come back,” he replied in the same voice.

“I’ve come back for good.” She smiled serenely at him, realizing from the dried blood streaking his lips and cheeks how much he loved her. She stood up and with the same calmness, walked towards his open arms.

And as they kissed, Tom understood that, regardless of what Gilliam Murray thought, this was a far more beautiful ending than the one where they never met again.





PART THREE


Distinguished gentlemen and impressionable ladies, we have arrived at the closing pages of our thrilling tale.

What marvels are there still in store for you? If you wish to find out, make sure your attention does not stray from these pages for an instant, because in an even more amazing discovery you will be able to travel in time to your heart’s content, into the past as well as to the future.

Dear reader, if you are no coward, dare to finish what you have started! We can guarantee this final journey Is well worth the effort.





34


Inspector Colin Garrett of Scotland Yard would have been pleased if the sight of blood did not make him feel so queasy that each time his job obliged him to look at a dead body he had to leave the scene to be sick, especially if the cadaver in question had been subjected to a particularly dreadful attack. However, sadly for him, this was such a regular occurrence that the inspector had even considered the possibility of forgoing breakfast, in view of how little time the meal actually remained in his stomach. Perhaps it was to compensate for this squeamishness that Colin Garrett had been blessed with such a brilliant mind. At any rate, that was what his uncle had always told him—his uncle being the legendary Inspector Frederick Abberline, who some years previously had been in charge of hunting down the vicious murderer, Jack the Ripper. Such was Abberline’s belief in his nephew’s superior brainpower that he had practically delivered the boy himself to Scotland Yard’s headquarters with an impassioned letter of recommendation addressed to Chief Superintendent Arnold, the austere, arrogant man in charge of the detective squad. And, during his first year there, Garrett had to acknowledge that, to his surprise, his uncle’s trust in him had not proved unfounded.

He had solved a great many cases since moving into his office overlooking Great George Street, apparently with very little effort. He had done so without ever leaving his office. Garrett would spend long nights in his cozy refuge, collecting and fitting together the pieces of evidence his subordinates brought to him, like a child absorbed in doing a jigsaw puzzle, avoiding as much as he could any contact with the raw, bloody reality that pulsated behind the data he handled. A sensitive soul like his, despite being twinned with a superior brain, was unsuited to fieldwork.

And of all the infernos raging behind his office door, perhaps morgues were the places that showed off the grittier side of crime to most flamboyant effect, its tangible side, its unpleasantly real, physical side that Garrett tried so hard to ignore. And so, each time he was forced to view a body, the inspector would give a resigned sigh, pull on his hat, and set off for the loathsome building concerned, praying he would have time to flee the autopsy room before his stomach decided to heave up his breakfast and avoid bespattering the pathologist’s shoes.