The Churchill Casebook of Curiosities
Book Four: The Mysterious Case of the Severed Hand
Chapter Seven: Fidus Interpres
Because you are a woman and I am a man
Fidus Interpres
‘Faithful Interpreter’
“Glory awaits those who go
unto the dark places of the earth
and seek that which the Lord
hath hidden in His vanity.”
–SIMON D’CHARTREUSE
The Chamber of the Fallen Star, Cap.IV:v
Friday 8th August 1879: London
I’m scared.
Very scared.
There is something loose in London and it kills everything in its path.
Silas and Jack searched the back of the warehouse, finding it abandoned, the few crates dust covered and unused. There were no stray scraps of clothing, no torn buttons, just the fob chain. “All we know is the Major was here,” Silas said grimly.
I slapped my diary close and sprung to my feet. “No! No, he wasn’t!” The gentlemen looked confused, so I gave them my theory. “It was our two Chinese nephews that found these books when they searched the library. The text, colours, even the paper, is remarkably similar to the scrap from the Kebra Nagast our hunchback provided. So in their search they grabbed anything close. When they were interrupted and confronted by poor Sanjeev and the Major a scuffle ensued, where Sanjeev was killed, Mr Lee lost his hand…and Mr Kwon tore the fob from the Major!”
A flicker lit Silas’s eyes as he listened. “Go on, Gideon.”
“After depositing his wounded cousin with Mrs Pan, Mr Kwon kept his rendezvous. He came here and presented the three books, hoping that one was the fabled Kebra Nagast. As we know, none were. You can imagine what happened next: our killer was enraged, and proceeded to tear Mr Kwon limb from limb.”
“What about the fob?”
“I cannot be sure, but either Mr Kwon offered it in a futile gesture for his life, or perhaps it was just dropped in the slaughter.”
Silas glanced at Blackwood who gave a slow nod. “Your theory has merit, Gideon,” Silas said thoughtfully. “It would explain why Kwon has disappeared, and why the books were left here.”
“And it means the Major is once again alive!” I exclaimed.
“Indeed,” Silas said with a faint smile.
“Our only remaining lead is Mr Neville at Caliban Books,” I said. “We must waste no more time; it is getting on to evening but any respectable book dealer will keep these hours.”
We had a very quick peek into the larger warehouse area at the front of the building. It was packed with crates, and obviously well used still. Searching that many items seemed futile, and it seemed very unlikely our brutal quarry would bother hiding anything in such a public space.
We hailed a growler and travelled to Leister Square.
Caliban Books stood on a strip of stores, a haven for booksellers in the thick of London. To our dismay Mr Neville’s store was dark, a ‘Closed’ sign drawn over the glass doors. We peered inside, and Silas rapped on the glass, but there was clearly no-one to receive us.
Frustrated, we entered the store directly opposite (Black Books, an auspicious name). When we asked the whereabouts of Mr Neville, the stroppy Jewish proprietor accused us of trying to trick him into boosting his competitor’s sales, but once Silas assured him his store was of equal interest (full of penny-dreadful novels and high fiction in equal parts so Silas was certainly not being entirely honest), he calmed down. “He closed up early, didn’t he. Early, but those types always do. I expect he’ll be drinking instead of working like an honest dealer does.”
“Was he here today, Mr Jacob?”
“As I just said, he was, and then he left.” He rolled his eyes at our incompetence.
We smiled faintly and, after Silas made a cursory tour of the goods, made our excuses. It seemed there was nothing suspicious about Caliban being closed, we had just been unlucky with our timing. Scouting the lane along the building we found a (locked) side door. “Shall we?” I said, leaning casually against the frame.
Silas scratched his chin. “I think not, it would be a little rude I think. Let’s return tomorrow and see what we find. If Mr Neville remains absent then we can reconsider.”
“But Silas I want to! We could be so close to another discovery!”
“Gideon you are like a steam train sometimes.”
“Yes. I run out of coal and stop dead,” I smiled ruefully.
“That’s not what I meant. It’s that once you get started you’re very hard to stop.”
I laughed, but I was secretly chuffed—not that I would ever admit that to Silas! “Well how about a nightcap, gentlemen? The Coffee House is but a short walk.”
“Certainly,” Blackwood said, and Silas nodded his assent.
“Although…Silas, you are married are you not?”
Silas rolled his eyes. “She understands. In fact she has encouraged me to peruse this case.”
“But won’t she be lonely?” I teased.
“Gideon.”
“Don’t you miss her?”
“Gideon.”
The first thing I saw on entering the Coffee House was Liberty.
“Ma’am.”
“Been a good girl, Liberty?”
“Yes?” she said with a nervous look to Eunice at the bar, who looked blankly back.
“Has she got you working downstairs yet?” This time Eunice’s gave me the blank look. I grinned. “What deliveries, Eunice?” I demanded as she poured shots for each of us (after first taking one herself, cheeky thing).
“The most interesting is that one there,” she said, nodding to a young fellow sitting bolt upright in a neat dispatch uniform. “Lad has been waiting for Mr Silas for some time.”
Silas looked surprised and walked over. “You have a message for me?”
“Doctor ‘awthorne sir? Well I thought I ‘d never.” He pulled out a crisp envelope and passed it to Silas.
“This is addressed to my surgery,” Silas frowned, “Why did you bring it here?”
“Lady there said I might find you ‘ere, Sir,” the lad explained.
“You’re in trouble, Silas!” I called with a smirk.
“It wasn’t her, Gideon,” Silas said without turning.
“You hope!”
“It’s downstairs. Mrs Barnett would have taken the message.”
“We have a downstairs here too you know,” I smiled, causing Blackwood to flush and pale simultaneously.
Silas waved me away, paid the boy, and read the letter.
“Would you like a taster for your travels, young man?” I asked.
“No, ma’am, thank you but the ‘ospitality ‘as been enough, ma’am,” he smiled.
I raised an eyebrow to Eunice as he scampered off. “He looked older than he was,” she shrugged.
“And how is Mrs Myrtle settling into her new role, Eunice?”
“Like a duck to water, madam. So much so that I had to reign her in.”
“It was a wonderful choice, Eunice. I commend you for seeing what was right in front of our eyes.”
“It was,” Eunice agreed, but I saw her lip curl in a supressed smile at the compliment.
“Did she manage to find the orchid?”
“It’s upstairs, madam, along with a rather large mirror that Mickey had delivered late. His man said Mr Blackwood will need to collect his other ‘items’ in person,” Eunice said with suspicion.
“I will do that, thank you lady,” Blackwood confirmed with a firm nod. At this juncture Mr Blackwood had to leave us—“a most important meeting at the Artisanal Club”—which was terribly unfortunate timing as it turned out. He missed the revelations that were to turn our entire investigation on its head.
Meanwhile, Silas finished reading and passed the note to me. “It seems our night might not be over after all,” he said.
British Museum,London, W.C. Friday, 8th August
Dear Dr Hawthorne, I hope this note finds you well and that you will forgive my presumption in contacting you thus. However it is my instinct that you may be in a position to assist me. I am hopeful that I have not misjudged you in this.
Since the visit of yourself and your companion yesterday, my curiosity was piqued and I was impelled to make certain inquiries. What I discovered has left me with not inconsiderable concerns. I would therefore very much like to confer with you a second time and, if I may, examine more thoroughly the fragment of manuscript you presented on your earlier visit.
To this end, I invite you and your companion to meet with me in my office at the British Museum an hour after closing and request that you bring with you, once again, that fragment of parchment. I shall see to it that the night porter is alerted to expect you.
It is my dearest hope that our conversation will put to rest my concerns and my troubling fancies will be proved to be just that.
Yours sincerely,
A Tinsdale
Deputy Keeper of Manuscripts
“Mr Tinsdale!” I swooned with delight. “What took him so long. But…why did he write to you not me?”
“Because you are a woman and I am a man,” Silas said.
“But I gave him my card?”
Silas stared at me and I suddenly understood. “Impossible men! I will forgive him on account of his handsomeness!”
“He does have lovely handwriting,” Silas observed, and he was right. Not a fancy man, instead it had that lovely quality of the practiced scholar who places value on penmanship, balance, and clarity. (Unlike my scribble, I observe regretfully as I write this!)
“Let us waste no time—to the Library!” I cried. “Oh. But do we have time to check on the orchid and mirror?”
“We do,” Silas assured me.
We traipsed upstairs (I must investigate the new dumb-waiters that can carry an entire person, unlikely though that sounds) to find two extraordinarily similar orchids sitting alongside the miscellaneous elephant parts. The foliage, the colour, the magnificent blooms: all were as near to copies of each other as to make it undeniable they were the same plant. At least to the untrained eye.
“Oh this is troubling,” Silas frowned. “I will prepare a test kit to make sure of it, but these appear to be the same genus. If they are…we have a very large problem brewing.”
I wasn’t so sure. “Did we ever truly establish that Chamberlain’s sickness was a result of the orchid? Could it be that he was wrong, or it was a ruse of some kind?”
“I saw the samples, saw the notes,” Silas said shaking his head. “They…” he paused, for longer than was comfortable.
“Silas?”
“I…you know, Gideon. Now that I think on it…it occurs to me that I never witnessed the entire chain. The transfer of material from the orchid, etc. I would have to go through Chamberlain’s notes in detail, but…it could indeed be a ruse to mislead.”
I was astonished. “Could it be that he returned from his expedition already infected in some way, and he has misattributed that to the Velvet Wraith? Which we now find is a ‘common’ flower in London, albeit with a different ‘Blue Raj’ name?”
“It will take some time to answer that. But it bears investigation.”
We had no time to unpick this new thread any further, nor to ponder if d’Chartreuse’s comment was happenstance or a skilfully placed ruse of his own. I quickly ascertained that the mirror was intact, and that it was indeed Mr Langbrook’s, then we departed for the British Library.
Where, as I have hinted, everything changed.
Despite the British Museum and Library being a bastion of the mind, after hours it rapidly degenerated into seediness, just like everywhere else. Men leaving their places of work were being intercepted by the usual street trade. A couple approached us idly before Silas shooed them away with a stern look and wave of his cane.
“A useful place for you to recruit, perhaps?” he suggested.
I scoffed. “Look at the state of them, I have standards to maintain and Mrs Myrtle is too strict.” I glanced slyly at Silas, standing straight-backed and officious. “Perhaps you would enjoy that, a little discipline? Oh but I forget myself; you already get that at home.”
Silas remained silent.
“Apologies, have I overstepped” I teased. “In any case there’s no way to simulate innocence, Doctor Hawthorne, which is why this lot hold no interest for me.”
I glanced at the pair nearest us, and almost had second thoughts: a taller, blonde-haired woman with a fetching red hat stood out from the crowd, carrying herself rather well and with what appeared a good enough complexion.
As it would turn out, there was a reason she caught my eye.
The porter’s house stood off the side of the museum, and a rotund fellow emerged to ask our business. “We are here to see the Deputy Keeper of Manuscripts,” Silas announced, “Mr Tinsdale.”
“Ah! You must be Doctor Hawthorne and…companion,” he said happily.
“Yes, I am indeed Ms Companion,” I smiled stupidly.
The porter looked confused for a moment, then led us inside the grand building. “Up the stairs and to your right. You’ll find Mr Tinsdale in the office toward the far end,” he pointed. We ventured through the Egyptian gallery, full of shadowed sarcophagi and golden funeral urns. It was rather magnificent, safe but unsettling in the gloom.
As the doctor and Ms Harrow made their way through the dim yet cavernous Egyptian hall, the air was suffused with an unsettling pall of death, conjured perhaps, from the echoes and shadows of a forgotten age.
A set of stairs led us upstairs to a corridor lined with doors leading to display rooms, with marble statues running the length. My heels clacked over the polished floors were the only sound. Mr Tinsdale’s rooms were guarded by two impressive statues, a Grecian man and woman. “Why are the women always so much smaller than the men?” I said, glancing into the scales the several-foot smaller woman held in eternal balance.
“What do you mean?” Silas said. “She is not so much smaller, and beside men are stronger—”
“Silas you are missing the point,” I interrupted. “It’s a philosophical question, not a practical one.”
Silas rolled his eyes and rapped his cane on Mr Tinsdale’s door. There was no answer, so he tried again.
Silence. Oh no. “Locked,” Silas said, trying the handle.
“Is that smoke?” I said, sniffing the air.
Silas nodded quickly, and before I could stop him he slammed himself into door to try and break it open. “Silas! Let me open it!” I said pulling a hairpin, but it was too late. Silas crashed the door again and it sprung open.
“Where is Mr Tinsdale?” I gasped.
The single room beyond was empty, holding only a desk, table, and two comfortable chairs. The walls were lined with books, and a fire blazed in the hearth, the source of the smoke which was drifting off rapidly disintegrating sheets of paper. Silas rushed to the fire and whipped out what he could as I smothered the flames as best I could.
One of the sheets was a small pink slip, an internal voucher for requesting items from the British Museum Department of Manuscripts.
“Tinsdale tried to borrow the Kebra Nagast—today!” I read with excitement. “But it was not found? ‘Not in press-B.B.?’ it says. Perhaps…Book Binding?” I guessed. “Did we know the Kebra was also called Glory of Kings?”
Silas shrugged, busy trying to piece together the scraps of the other sheet. “This is a letter addressed to me,” he explained with surprise, “Also dated today.”
Silas read what he could:
“Dear Dr Hawthorne,
I write to you now in case, for whatever reason we are unable to meet as hoped this evening.
With events as they have transpired, my concerns regarding the gravity of our situation have only increased since sending my earlier note. For in my folly, I have not spent the interim in idleness, though in hindsight, I now wish that perhaps I had. What miserable world is this where a scholar should crave ignorance? But I digress, for impatient as I was, I took the opportunity to…”
“Here the page is burnt,” Silas said with frustration. “The rest is hard to make out: ‘Therefore, as unbelievable as it is, I beg that you indulge me, if only for your own safety.'”
“A missing section, then: ‘…yet what else am I to infer from these things that I have seen and heard with my own eyes and ears? Thus I have gathered from Prof. R. Holme’s office his…', and, ‘…seems unthinkable that an ancient Hungarian…'” Silas read.
“An ancient what?”
“Hungarian.”
“Does that mean our hunchbacked friend is Hungarian?”
“And ancient,” Silas shrugged, then continued reading. “'Again I hope that I have not misjudged your intent and that you can make use of what I have related here, along with the contents of the professor’s…'—and that’s all we have,” Silas sighed.
“My goodness,” I exclaimed. “What have we stumbled upon? Or, more accurately, what did Mr Tinsdale stumble upon? An ‘ancient Hungarian’?”
“There must be notes here somewhere, from Rivington Holmes,” Silas said looking around the study.
There were several open notebooks on the table, but they proved of no consequence—a ledger, and lexicons of Greek and Aramaic. We checked the desk next, and soon found what we sought: I made quick work of a locked draw and inside lay a bound manilla folder. “Rivington Holmes’s notes,” Silas said with satisfaction.
A quick glance showed the notes to be a summary of the Kebra Nagast, but before we could read them we were stopped short by the sound of someone rattling an iron gate outside, followed by a crunch of gravel. I moved quickly to the lone window in time to see something so unexpected I had to have a double take: the street-walker with the red hat we had seen earlier had just climbed over the Museum fence below and was hurrying away down the opposite street.
“Silas!” I cried opening the window latch open and drawing the window up, “We have to go after her!”
It was a small leap down onto a lower roof overhang, then onto the gravel to the fence. I leapt down with no problem and started after our quarry.
“Argh!” Silas grunted.
I turned to find Silas had fallen and twisted his ankle rather badly (the irony after our statue discussion was not lost on me!). He struggled to his feet and urged me on. I sprinted ahead and clambered over the iron fence, losing sight of the red had as she rounded a corner. Silas struggled behind me, grunting in pain as he landed again on his ankle. I ran forward to the corner and stumbled, banging myself into the wall, as I tripped over something around the corner of the lane.
I glanced down and felt myself go faint: the woman was lying at my feet bleeding profusely from a wound from collarbone to loin. “Silas?” I gasped, before retching uncontrollably.
Silas hobbled over and knelt, feeling for a pulse. He turned the body gently and her hat fell free and eyes snapped open. “Eyes…like two discs of fire,” she gasped, before letting out a long, final sigh.
Recovering, I turned, and a second shock shook me. “That’s…that’s Susanna! d’Chartreuse’s nun who lured Daphne!” I cried, shivering.
With a start, Dr Hawthorne realised he knew the dead girl; it was Susanna, the Satan worshipper!
“There’s no time for that now,” Silas said urgently as he frisked the body. Susanna’s hand fell open and two small objects dropped free. Silas scooped them up. “We have to get out of here, quickly!”
“We can’t just leave,” I hissed, “We have to find Mr Tinsdale, or at the very least tidy up his rooms. The porter knows we’ve been here.”
Silas nodded agreement, and we ran (Silas limping badly now) back to the Museum, scaling the fence again. There was no way to climb back up, but we found a lower ground door that I quickly unlocked. We made our way back upstairs and into Mr Tinsdale’s room.
Silas placed the two items he had recovered onto the table. Both appeared to have been torn free of a chain. “Perhaps off the neck of the killer,” Silas mused.
“If so that’s his first mistake,” I nodded.
The first trinket was a square, silver medallion with two holy figures embossed surrounded by some cryptic writing. As much as I could make out it read: KYNPIANOC K IXCTINH. A total mystery.
The second was a coin. “Pope Innocent!” I exclaimed, “The same coin Mrs Innocenti had upon her person!” Would the surprises never end? First d’Chartreuse returns, now Mrs Innocenti. Who next—Jessica??
“There is certainly a lot going on we don’t realise,” Silas agreed.
“Susanna must have been here under instruction of d’Chartreuse,” I mused. “Watching us, but not involved with whatever happened here. And now she too is dead. It seems anyone who crosses this beast—this ‘ancient Hungarian’ beast—is fated to die. When will it be our turn?”
“First things first, Gideon,” Silas said, levelled headed. “Where is Mr Tinsdale? How did he get out of this room?”
I turned to close the door as best I could and stopped. “There’s a key in the lock,” I said quietly.
“On the inside?” Silas frowned. “So who locked it? And where are they?” He felt his ankle gingerly.
“The window was latched closed, so they didn’t leave that way.” I looked around the small room again. “There must be another way out.”
We set about finding that way, if indeed there was one. The attractive foreign rug on the floor seemed to be out of position with one corner curled over, but there was no hidden trapdoor beneath it. We repositioned the rug just in case—after the mirrors it seemed flying carpets weren’t out of the question. Speaking of mirrors, there were none.
Two small tables held small statues, the first a traditional English knight, and the second a stone carving of Horus (according to Silas). As I leant in to examine it I noticed something I would rather not have. “Is that blood?”
“It is,” Silas said grimly. “And rather too fresh for comfort.”
“You don’t think…”
“I fear that I do.”
Mr Tinsdale.
We continued our search, getting more desperate now. Silas found some faint drops of blood near the rug, leading us to suppose a struggle of some kind had taken place, with the carpet disturbed and Horus deployed. I studied the shelving behind the desk, finding a single tome jutting out oddly. I pulled it free…and a secret panel slowly opened! It was amazing, a lavish mechanism constructed into the office when it was built. The Museum must be full of such wonders, and at any other time I would have been delighted. But now I was only scared. And sorry Blackwood wasn’t here to witness this engineering feat.
Behind the hidden panel was an iron platform with spiral stairs leading down, and a dumb-waiter. “Silas you’ll have to raise the dumb-waiter, for if there is anything like I suspect might be on it I might faint on the spot.”
Even Silas was felt some hesitation as he raised the chain. Thankfully there was only a plan iron cage, empty. “Empty, but…more blood,” Silas said softly. We peered down the staircase with trepidation, but there was nothing for it. We descended, Silas grunting occasionally as his ankle got worse with each step.
A whitewashed corridor greeted us, shrouded in darkness. I ran back up and retrieved an oil lamp from Mr Tinsdale’s office, which revealed the droplets of blood leading forth. We followed them to a door, unlocked. I was shaking with fear at this point, so Silas did the honours.
I fainted. Finally!
When I came to I shuddered to see contents again. The room was packed with stumps and bones, and the dismembered corpses of half a dozen animals. I was briefly relieved they were only animals, before noticing Silas was leaning over a leadlined marble table. Running along the side of the table were gutters full of barely congealed blood.
I fainted again.
“Someone, or something, has been dismembered within the last hour,” Silas said when I roused for the second time. “And there is a strange smell, fruity like hexane mixed with vinegar. It’s unusual as I would expect alcohol for preservation,” he added. I could not see any reason for this superfluous detail, but he was a Doctor an I merely a thief.
Further inside stood another door. Silas walked determinedly over and pulled it open. “Jesus my fucking Christ,” he swore softly.
That was enough for me. I stayed where I was.
Silas told Jack and I later what he had seen.
“I’m a seasoned doctor and thought I had seen everything. But this…this was something out of a nightmare. The room was lined with large glass jars with sealed lids, and inside the jars were all manner or abominations. I do not use that term lightly, they were abominations. Human babies split from the waist up into two, double-headed snakes, pre-born animals of every species, sea-creatures with a million tentacles,” Silas paused.
His face was pale as he relived the moment, swallowing his bile.
“I lifted the lantern,” he hesitated and reached a hand for mine. “I lifted the lantern and before me…Mr Tindale’s head. Staring back at me, a single bubble of oxygen floating from his nose.”