The Endicott Evil Page 24

  “Welcome ta beautiful Newgate Prison,” the towering guard sneered. “Yer man is fourth down on the left, second floor. Let’s try not ta get picked off on yer way to him, huh?!”

  I thought he meant for us to find Wynn Tessler on our own, but he led us into the vast space and up the closest staircase, trudging heavily as he went and leaving me to wonder at the soundness of the old structure. If nothing else, it provided me something to concentrate on beyond the pervasive smell that only thickened as we rose to the second level. I could not imagine how I would have tolerated it had we been forced up to the third.

  “Leave some room between yerselves and the cells ya pass. If I gotta wrench ya free from one a these buggers you ain’t gonna be happy.” This time the man did not smirk or chuckle in the least as he set himself just to the right of the walkway’s center and began making his way down the row of cells arrayed on his left.

  Little was said as we passed the first three cells, though one man gave a sonorous whistle. For an instant I feared that it might signal something untoward before remembering that both our attendant and Mr. Evans were visibly armed. I also knew that Colin had secreted a two-shot derringer under his arm as well, and I was suddenly well pleased for it. I did not shift my eyes to the left but kept them riveted on the back of Colin’s tawny head, determined not to make eye contact with any of these men.

  “Wake up, Tessler,” our guide said as he drew up to the fourth cell, drawing a ring of keys from his waist that was bigger than my fist. “Ya got some admirers wanna have a word.”

  I drew up to the cell and turned to face it, finding myself staring at a brick space no more than five feet across and eight feet deep with a curved ceiling that stood barely six feet at its highest point. The walls were whitewashed and there was a bucket and a metal pitcher chained to the floor against the back wall with a roll of bedding beside it. A single chair and a table no larger than it stood near the front of the cell, and I realized that if the bedding were left unrolled it would dominate the tiny space. It reminded me of the cells the monks at Whitmore Abbey lived in, although theirs were a choice while these were meant to demoralize at best.

  It took a moment for my vision to adjust to the dimly lit space so that the first thing I spied of Wynn Tessler were his eyes reflecting the glow from the buzzing electric lights mounted on the ceiling outside his cell. He looked hollow and haunted and had obviously lost weight, as his cheekbones appeared to be cutting across his face like razors, his eye sockets sunken and dark. His hair was shorn almost to the point of baldness, and the gray uniform he was wearing hung from his frame as though there was almost nothing beneath it.

  “Mr. Tessler,” Colin said with the same easy deference as if we had run into him in Green Park.

  “Ah . . .” Wynn Tessler’s voice came out stilted and cracked, a sign that he did not use it much. “. . . Mr. Pendragon and Mr. Pruitt. Come to gloat, have you?” He took a step into the refracted light, and to my surprise I saw that he wore an expression that was neither disdainful nor caustic.

  “We take no solace in another man’s downfall,” Colin said. “We are here with Mr. Evans of Scotland Yard because we have made precious little progress on the whereabouts of Charlotte Hutton. I was hoping you might be more eager to reveal any further details you might know about her before you suffer the blame of these crimes solely on your own. . . .” Colin abruptly turned to the warder and gestured at the barred door. “Open this door so that we may speak with Mr. Tessler properly,” he ordered, as though the right was his to do so. “We are civilized men here, not barbarians.”

  The bearish man looked taken aback as he slid his eyes to Mr. Evans. “I don’t think so,” he rumbled.

  “You’ll do it,” Mr. Evans spoke up, “or I shall have your badge and uniform before nightfall.”

  I had no idea whether he could make good on his threat, but the hulking guard moved forward and instantly unlocked the great barred door, pulling it open with one hand. “If ya try ta make a move over this threshold,” he growled at Wynn Tessler, “I will crack yer skull before ya know I’m there.” And to ensure that his threat was taken seriously he removed the billy club from his waist and smacked it into the palm of his hand.

  “There is no need for that.” Colin scowled at the man as he stepped inside the cell himself.

  Neither Mr. Evans nor I followed. I doubted there was room for either of us anyway. Nevertheless, I did manage to place myself between the door and the warder so that I would not miss anything being said.

  “You are welcome to the chair, Mr. Pendragon,” Mr. Tessler said derisively. “You might notice it is one of the few luxuries left to me.”

  Colin waved it off as he stood right in front of Mr. Tessler. “I will be satisfied simply to hear your claims of Mrs. Hutton—”

  Mr. Tessler held up a hand and silenced Colin. “Allow me to tell you what you will hear if you ever do manage to find her,” he started, his tone dry and harsh. “She will claim to have been a victim of my cruelties. I will have bribed her into complicity by raising my fists against her until she had no choice but to cuckold her piteous husband.” He smirked, but there was no humor in his look. “Poor Arthur. Such a pitiful man. Everything he touched he fouled. Except for her. She was already venomous.”

  “So you and her husband were innocent victims of her whims, then?”

  “Do not mock me, Mr. Pendragon.”

  “Do not play me for a fool.”

  Wynn Tessler sneered. “I am already paying for my part of this . . . this . . .” He seemed unable to name what he had done, though I did not have the sense that it was because his conscience bothered him. “If I knew where she had gone . . . if I had the slightest notion of where to send you, I would make you a map myself. Nothing would bring me more pleasure than to walk to those bloody gallows knowing that harpy as going to dangle beside me.” His eyes drifted sideways and lost their focus for a moment. “I tell you quite honestly. . . .” he said wistfully before his gazed snapped back to Colin’s face. “I would die with a smile.”

  “She never mentioned anything to you? Someone on the Continent she knew? Somewhere she was fond of? Was there nothing, however idle, that gives you any thoughts on reflection? She took her daughter, Mr. Tessler. What would she have done with Anna? Where would she have taken her?”

  Mr. Tessler tilted his head back and closed his eyes, and I noticed his body sag. “I have nothing for you, Mr. Pendragon. How I wish that I did. She is the most devious creature I have ever had the misfortune to know.” He fell silent a moment before looking back at Colin again. “Do you know that one evening when she was delayed in returning home to her boorish husband after we had enjoyed a full day’s assignation, I watched her gouge a knife from the midpoint of her forearm to the elbow just so she would have a story to tell Arthur of the accident that had made her so unaccountably late.” His face soured. “She is a horror, Mr. Pendragon. She is the very plague itself.”

  “All right . . .” The warder loomed into the doorway, shoving me out of the way as he stuck a finger into Colin’s back. “That’s enough now. It’s time for you to be on your way.”

  To my surprise, Colin backed out at once rather than argue against the abrupt end to our time here, which was nowhere near the ten minutes we had been promised. I watched as Colin gave a small nod of his head to Wynn Tessler from the doorway. “You paint the woman with a very black brush indeed, and yet you yourself admit to having fallen well under her influence.”

  “And so I did,” he said. “And for that I am on the cusp of paying with my miserable life.”

  The warder leaned back and seized the door, swinging it shut and bolting it back in place with the fluidity of someone who has done so too many times before. Even so, Mr. Tessler did not move. With the shadow of the bars painted across his face he remained right where he was, staring out at us, his hollowed eyes no longer able to reflect anything. I found it difficult to look away from him, but as the warder and Colin and Mr. Ev
ans started off, I forced myself to follow them.

  CHAPTER 25

  Colin was pacing in front of the fireplace while riffling through the pages of notes I had taken at Mrs. Denholm’s house. It was his third time through them for the simple reason that there was nothing to be found there. So I was hardly surprised when not a second later his arm holding the pages suddenly went limp, hanging uselessly at his side, the papers dangling perilously close to the fire. For a moment I thought he might be about to pitch them in, but he did not. Instead he just stood there like that, stock-still, glaring at the lapping flames for what seemed several minutes before just as suddenly bringing the pages back to his face and starting to reread them again.

  I could not help the sigh that escaped me as I tried to turn my attention back to the observations I was scribbling about our visit to Wynn Tessler. It seemed important to record the recollections while still fresh before further conversation and time began to soften the edges of what we had actually seen and heard there.

  The one memory that would not release itself from my mind, however, was the fact that Wynn Tessler had known exactly the story she would tell—did tell me, the first time she approached me. Such a tale of abuse and fear, just as he had said she would. Which put me in mind of the scars she had revealed to me, and of Mr. Tessler’s story of seeing her slash her own arm open for wont of an excuse. Was it truly possible that she could have done such things to herself? It seemed unfathomable even as a foreboding shiver ripped down my spine.

  “Oh . . .” I heard Colin exclaim at the same instant a sudden pounding rattled our door downstairs.

  I set my pen down and watched Colin hustle over from the fireplace to the windows, yanking the curtains aside and gazing out, my notes still dangling from his other hand. “Oh, bloody buggery hell,” he grumbled.

  “What? Who is it?”

  “Lord Thomas Endicott in all his blustering glory,” he answered, his tone sarcastic and annoyed. “I just spoke to the ruddy man yesterday morning and now he has come here, and you can bet it’s not to thank me for the work I’ve been doing to find his sister’s murderer.” He let the curtain fall back into place before stalking over to me and thrusting my notes out. “And just as I’ve discovered that you may be onto something here.” He tossed the notes on top of the page I had been writing and yanked our suit jackets from the rack, tossing mine to me even as he shrugged on his own. “Look proper. The old prig is a pisser for details.”

  “Why on earth would Lord Endicott come here . . . ?” I asked, sounding foolish even to myself and wholly ignoring the fact that Colin had just claimed some value in my slipshod notes.

  “Keep yer bloomers on. . . .” I heard Mrs. Behmoth holler below us as her heavy footfalls trod toward the door. “Ain’t nothin’ worth all that racket.”

  “That oughta warm him up nicely,” Colin sneered.

  I shoved all of the loose papers into the desk drawer and quickly pulled my coat on, yanking my tie up to my collar. Before I could get across the room I heard the door open, followed by the sound of Mrs. Behmoth.

  “Why, Lord E . . .” she said to Lord Endicott, as though he were the dairy delivery boy. “I ain’t seen you since I don’t even know when. Come in . . . come in. . . .”

  I shot my gaze over to Colin, parked in front of the fireplace again, and could not help but roll my eyes. He gave me a shrug and shook his head. “She worked for my father for a very long time,” he explained needlessly. “She knows everybody he knows.”

  I heard the sound of two people plodding up the stairs, their voices sibilant and affable, before Mrs. Behmoth appeared on the landing with an older gentleman on her heels. He was broad chested and of medium height, with bushy gray hair that was thinning at the front, and two of the longest, fattest muttonchop sideburns I had ever seen. For a moment I was struck by the fact that he wore no mustache where it seemed one ought to be, given the preponderance of facial hair he was wearing, but in the next instant I was distracted by the thin, grim turn of his lips.

  “Lord E ta see ya,” Mrs. Behmoth bothered to announce as she swung her arm toward the settee. “Ya know Colin, a course, and this ’ere ’is Ethan Pruitt. You’ll find ’e ain’t so moody as that one,” she added with a thrust of her chin in Colin’s direction. “Now sit yerself down and I’ll bring ya up some tea and biscuits.”

  “You mustn’t put yourself out,” Lord Endicott answered with a scowl as he seated himself without so much as a glance toward either me or Colin. “This isn’t a social visit.”

  “Ah,” she scoffed as she headed back for the stairs. “I were jest makin’ some for meself. Gettin’ another cup or two ain’t nothin’.”

  She had barely disappeared from view before Lord Endicott turned his exasperation toward Colin, and I watched as his expression, astonishingly, became even more irritated. “I must say that I am extremely disappointed to find myself here.”

  “No more so than we are,” Colin volleyed back in a way that could conceivably be construed as an apology for having dragged him out on whatever duty had soured his face so, though I knew, and I suspected His Lordship did too, that it was no sort of an apology at all.

  “Nevertheless . . .” Lord Endicott continued, “. . . you can imagine my displeasure at having my sister telephone me this morning, a Sunday morning, to tell me that you were there snooping about Addie’s room yet again when all you really need to do is get Scotland Yard to arrest that blasted piss pot Mr. Nettle. Really now, I thought when you and your father came to see me yesterday that we had an understanding. Does he have any idea what you’ve been on about?”

  To my surprise Colin actually took a moment before he leaned back against the fireplace and allowed the worst sort of pinched smile to settle onto his face. “While my father and I are tremendously close, I do not tell him how to do his business and he does not tell me how to do mine.”

  “No,” Lord Endicott practically snarled. “I would say that is evident.”

  “As a man of the law I should think you would demand justice to be brought to bear on your sister’s death first and foremost. That you seem just as eager to see this case closed as your sister—damn the truth—makes the force of your determination seem both inexplicable and suspect.”

  I cringed, but not before Lord Endicott had heaved himself to his feet and howled, “How dare you! I will not be spoken to in such a manner by anyone, I don’t care whose son you happen to be.”

  “My parentage has no bearing on the resolve I bring to my cases. So why don’t you tell me why you are so resolute that Freddie Nettle be arrested for a murder that I am not convinced he even committed?”

  Lord Endicott looked momentarily taken aback as he glared at Colin, his brow furrowing as he appeared to finally be considering at least some of what Colin was saying. “You said murder.” His tone was sharp as a razor, his wariness almost palpable. “Then you do believe Addie was murdered?”

  “I don’t believe it. I am certain of it.”

  “Well, then . . .” Lord Endicott huffed as he lowered himself back onto the settee, “. . . then at least we agree on something.”

  With unaccountably fortunate timing I heard Mrs. Behmoth begin her trek back up the staircase, her tread slower and more methodical than usual, assuring me that she was bearing refreshments. All I hoped was that the pause might allow the two men to settled themselves a bit.

  “Are ya still partial ta shortbread?” Mrs. Behmoth asked as she came in and set the tray onto the low table in front of me.

  He managed to stir up something of a tepid grin. “Indeed I am. And I seem to remember you were quite skilled at making them.”

  “Still am,” she answered, stepping back so that Colin could take his seat and do the honors. “’Cept I ain’t got any for ya today. This here’s me rhubarb cake. And I got a couple a raspberry-and-lemon tarts wot that woman next door makes. They’ll suit ya if ya like that sort a thing.”

  “It all looks wonderful,” he said with the first e
arnest smile I had seen since his arrival.

  Mrs. Behmoth grinned back as she started for the landing. “Next time ya stop by ta give these two a bawlin’ ya gotta let me know yer comin’ and I’ll make up a nice warm pan a shortbread.”

  Lord Endicott looked momentarily startled before he appeared to quickly collect his wits and, still retaining that amused grin, said, “I wouldn’t wish it any other way.”

  “Right, then.” Mrs. Behmoth chuckled as she started back down the stairs.

  “Perhaps I have been a touch abrupt in my demeanor,” His Lordship began once he had his tea and a great slab of rhubarb cake in his hands. “You simply cannot understand what it means to have Genie phoning me up on a Sunday in an absolute dither. It is a helluva thing. A helluva thing.”

  “No doubt.” Colin ghosted a thin smirk. “You might want to reconsider the telephone. They could prove more trouble than they are worth.”

  “I think it’s a bloody ripe invention. If I’d been able to phone you, I might be eating shortbread right now,” he added, though he hardly seemed to be suffering the loss as he devoured his cake.

  “I hope you understand that Mr. Pruitt and I are not trying to vex your sister. Our only aim is to ensure that the right person pays for Miss Adelaide’s death. And while I realize that Mr. Nettle is the most obvious perpetrator, I simply cannot convince myself that he is, in fact, responsible. I must ask you to permit me to follow this through until we can reach the truth.”

  Lord Endicott sipped his tea a minute, his face revealing nothing, as it was hidden behind his teacup and those monstrous muttonchops. After another moment he set his cup onto the tray and rose to his feet, popping the last bit of rhubarb cake into his mouth before wiping it brusquely with his napkin. “It is Sunday,” he announced incongruously. “I should like to see this affair settled by Tuesday at the latest. We are laying Addie to rest that afternoon, and I see no reason why the entire matter shouldn’t be completed by then. Nothing would be more fitting then to have her murderer charged and behind bars the very day of her services.” He tossed his napkin onto the tray. “Do we have an understanding?”