The Infidel Stain (The Blake and Avery Mystery Series) - Hardcover

Prologue

The still, quiet shop was a blessed shelter from the biting cold. She had risen at four to walk the six miles to Hackney Road and back, and all the way she had held on to that half hour when she would creep in, fall gratefully into a dark corner, shut her eyes and cast aside her cares. Sometimes she thought it was the place she liked best in the world, not just for the refuge it provided, but also because of the old familiar odors—the smell of ink, of lampblack and linseed oil, the musty dry scent of paper; and the tools—the boxes of type and gravers and burins.

She did not like to come too often, for she did not want him to grow tired of her, and so she had waited and stored up this morning’s visit. He never seemed to mind finding her though, not even when at the start she had taken things—not much, but enough to land her a week in the correctional house: a bit of paper, or an empty box, or a piece of type that she would rub between her fingers. He had shown her how to get in so no one could see, and sometimes, when he was opening up, he would send her out to the coffee stall and have her buy one for herself.

The street was quite empty. The coffee seller was still on the Strand, serving the late-nighters and early-morning comers. She made her way past the darkened shopfront, into the alley around the side, behind the outside steps that led to the door of their living quarters. Under these, and out of sight of prying eyes, she cleared the bricks away from the little square door, took the small key tied to a bit of string from out of her skirts, placed it in the rusted lock and turned it.

Squatting down on her haunches, she edged through. She did not crawl as it messed her skirts and her basket and she would be selling today. There was a small cavity between the little door and the print room where they stored boxes and type and, having inched her way through the gap, she came out into the room at last.

It was very dark. She stood and brushed herself down. Dawn would not come for a while. The front was shuttered and the cracked window in the back had been blacked out—he had taken to doing this recently, claiming that it stopped the cold, but she reckoned he was working on something he wished no one to see. She knew the room well, so she was not concerned, and it was a relief to be out of the wind which whistled outside, looking for ways through the cracks. Arms outstretched, she began to walk toward the far wall, taking care not to disturb any boxes. To the right of her she could just make out the silhouette of the press. In the darkness it seemed to loom even bigger than usual.

Her boot slid from under her and for a moment she lost her balance and thought she would fall. She swore quietly as she righted herself, and clung to her basket. The floor was wet. She lifted her skirt, took another big step and grimaced. It was slippery here too. Perhaps a cat or a rat had knocked over some ink. No. He would not have been so careless to have left any lying around. Maybe one of his old workers had broken in to sleep off the night’s excesses and knocked over a bottle, or spewed up, or worse. He was accustomed to working on his own, but once in a while a writer or illustrator or printer came in to help—soakers and topers, the lot of them.

“That you, Seymour?” she said. “You drunk?” But there was no answer.

“Mr. Wedderburn? Nat?”

Standing there in the dark, she began to feel uneasy. She was, she realized, holding her breath. And there was an unfamiliar smell, acrid and sharp; it made her eyes water. Some instinct told her to lay her hands upon something solid and she took a quick step back, feeling for the wall. But she lost her balance and went down, one hand reaching out to break her fall, the other grasping the basket. Her hand was wet, and the stuff was all over her skirt. She cursed again and rubbed her fingers together. Sticky, slightly thick even. Not piss then, nor booze either. She sniffed and pulled herself up quickly, keeping clear of the great piece of machinery in the middle of the room. The sense of foreboding deepened, and the thought came upon her that there was someone else there, in the dark. Fear rose in her. Quickly, quietly—though it was too late for that, she knew—she felt her way around the walls to the back window. The tool bench stood before it. She put her basket upon it and felt for an engraving tool, something sharp. Then she stretched up to pull the piece of old blanket away from the window frame, feeling herself exposed as she did so. The sky was just beginning to lighten and the room was suddenly a good deal brighter. Her fingertips and palms were stained with something black like ink. But she knew it was not ink. She did not want to turn around, but she forced herself to do so.

The sight imprinted itself upon her eye, like a flash of light.

Blood, terrible and black like ink, everywhere. As if a great, hideous bucket of it had been poured over him. Blood soaking through his trousers and pooling on the floor, where her boots had spread it into the corners. Blood painted over his face, across his arms and on his chest. Blood spewing, along with his guts, from a deep and livid cut in his stomach, as broad and wet as a mouth. And his body, bloodied and draped over the bed of the printing press, head propped against the platen, arms dangling off each side.

Part One

Chapter One

The day was cold and bleak as I emerged from the Blackwall railway terminus, and the sooty brick of the city made it seem all the grayer. I had not long returned from India; after years in hot climes I was not yet re-accustomed to the English cold. I pulled my coat more tightly around me and checked my pocket watch for the tenth or twelfth time. I did not wish to be late.

It had been two days of novelties. The morning before I had taken my first ever journey upon a train, riding the Exeter mailcoach to Swindon to catch the Great Western Railway to the Paddington terminus in London. Five years before, I had left England a country traversed by horse and carriage; I had returned to find it in thrall to steam and iron.

I had stepped into the green-and-gold carriage, sat on the wooden pews of second class and watched the air fill with steam, as if we were traveling on a bed of cloud. I had felt the rush of speed and watched the curious effect of the countryside melting into a blur of green as it rushed past the window, or rather as we rushed past it. And, of course, there was the noise: the clank and wheeze of the wheels on the rail, the asthmatic puff of the engine, and those sudden unholy screeches—the wheels braking, or the air forcing its way through the whistle. We had reached the extraordinary speed of thirty miles an hour. It was remarkable, exhilarating, unsettling—not unlike London itself.

I had been in the city less than a day. I had rooms at the Oriental Club in Hanover Square. It was only my second visit to London; my first had been when I was nine years old. I recalled almost nothing of it save that we had seen my rich, scowling great-uncle at his gloomy abode in Golden Square—a place which greatly disappointed me as I had expected it actually to be golden—and I had seen a hurdy-gurdy man with a dancing dog in the street.

This time, I started with a hansom cab to the Strand—where else? It is “the first street in Europe,” at least according to Mr. Disraeli. I walked its length from Temple Bar to Charing Cross, past its arcades and grand shops with square-paned windows, and the discreet plaques signaling the offices of various journals and newspapers. At Charing Cross I paused, new Trafalgar Square and the slowly rising girth of the column to Nelson on one side of me, and on the other Old Hungerford market and its rackety steps down to the River Thames. Ahead I could just see part of the fretted bulk of the unfinished Houses of Parliament. On the roadway, the broughams and chaises, drays and goods carts, rattling omnibuses and gilded chariots barely moved.

The noise was constant and deafening.

Apart from Calcutta, I had never been in such a vast multitude of jostling people, from fine ladies and gents peering into the shop windows, to Sir Robert Peel’s new police (not so new, I suppose, after ten-odd years, but that was how everyone referred to them) walking their “beats” in their high-collared blue tunics, to the crossing sweepers, ragged half-starved creatures endlessly and fruitlessly sweeping away great mounds of ordure from the roadway. I strode among them in my paletot coat, my newish beaver hat pushed down over my ears against the wind, a reasonably well-to-do provincial a few months behind the fashion. I had never seen so many top hats in one place: as I looked down the Strand their bobbing throng seemed to me to resemble a moving city panorama all of its own.

The deluge of sensations was overwhelming. On the one hand, for the first time in months I felt free from the constant petty squabbles, the burdens, the boredom, the scrutiny, the disappointments of home. On the other, despite the crowds I had the strange and troubling sensation of being alone in a vast multitude of unsmiling faces; nor was I overfond of the ubiquitous, black grime—an oily, sooty extrusion that bore little relation to country dirt and seemed to coat all—and every once in a while I would taste coal dust in the air. Then there was the vast amount of ordure and dung from the horses, and everywhere glimpses of errant, ownerless children, vagabonding, street-selling, begging. I had recently finished Mr. Dickens’s Old Curiosity Shop, and the vision of little Nell, the pauper girl, seemed ever before me. It was a relief to return to the quiet, clean haven of Mayfair and Hanover Square.

This morning I had taken my second train, from hard by the Tower of London to the East India Dock on the Blackwall Railway. There was a crowd of gawkers around the gates of the Tower, for only a few days ago a fire had destroyed the Round Tower and almost consumed the Crown jewels. A twist of smoke still wafted upward from within the battlements. The journey eastward showed a meaner London: a moving picture of shabby streets, half-finished terraces and dilapidated workshops, then a scrubland of broken fences and overgrown market gardens, and behind all these vast stretches of open dock filled with masts, populated by beetling stevedores.

I walked toward the great stone gateway of the East India Dock, which loomed like the entrance to some vast Hindoo palace. The high walls of the dock were pasted thick with bills, most of them advertising the lower sort of popular papers, the Ironist, Bell’s Life in London and Woundy’s Illustrated Weekly. In the lee of the walls small sheds and shacks served drink and tobacco to a crowd of wretched-looking sailors. On I went, past a new church and an old timber-framed house to a rickety smoke-blackened edifice that announced itself in large faded letters as “The Hindoostanee Coffee House and Seamen’s Hostel”: my destination.

The door was stiff and rattled as I opened it. I found I was almost breathless. I pushed past a thick canvas curtain and entered. Perhaps twenty or thirty men sat at tables, eating. It took me a moment to see that all were Indian natives—Lascars, I guessed, from the docks. Rushing between the tables, two or three more young natives set down bowls and collected plates. The air was thick, warm and slightly fetid, a familiar marriage of perspiration and curry smells that I had not expected to encounter again. No one paid me any mind.

Most of the diners were dressed in the thin calicoes and canvases of the southern oceans, which must have provided little protection against the bitter cold outside. Some looked quite ragged, and in far from good health. There was a low buzz of talk, but most simply ate with a dedication that bespoke considerable hunger. I looked about again, more carefully. In a fireplace at the far end of the room, a large grate overflowed with glowing embers. To the left of this, in a corner, sat a lone European eating his dinner. He seemed as down-at-heel as the Lascars around him.

It was over three years since we had last met.

He was scooping up stew with pieces of roti. With a surge of concern and pleasure I pushed my way through the close-set tables toward him.

“Jeremiah!” I said as I reached him, my arms outstretched.

“Captain Avery,” he said. His lips barely moved. His eyes were veiled and wary.

I felt a plunge of dismay. I dropped my arms, embarrassed.

“Sit down,” he said, indicating a chair with his piece of roti, and returned to his food.

I pulled it out and wedged myself in, looking for somewhere to place my coat and hat, electing at last for my own lap. A plate was set down before me, along with a steaming bowl of curry. Reluctantly, I put a spoonful upon my plate and took a furtive look at him, remembering as I did so that insistently solitary, aloof quality that I had conveniently forgotten. He was frailer and more lined than I remembered, but his features were vividly familiar: the white scar through the eyebrow, the ragged ear, the once-broken nose, the hooded eyes. His left hand, with its two missing fingers, was beneath the table. His rusty, threadbare coat had clearly been through several owners; his waistcoat had lost all but one button, and the collar—closer to yellow than white—was pinned on, no doubt to hide a tattered shirt beneath. Next to him was a small bundle that included a battered hat.

Through the awkwardness of my reception, questions began to surface. What had become of him? How had he learned I had returned from India? How was he earning his living—was he earning his living at all?

I took a breath. “What is this place?” I said.

“Hostel for Lascar seamen,” he said. He scooped another mouthful of curry onto his roti and crammed it into his mouth.

“So,” I said. “Three years. More.” Blake chewed and nodded.

“How have you been?”

“Well enough. You were in Afghanistan.”

I had forgotten how he intensely disliked talking about himself. I nodded.

“Decorated for bravery, promoted to captain, I heard.”

“Yes.” I shifted uneasily.

“Papers say the war’s going well.”

“Is it?” I said.

“Isn’t it?”

“I do not keep up.”

“You’re living in Devon.”

“We have taken a house near my family.”

“You married Miss Larkbridge.”

“Yes.” I did not know how he knew these things, but I was not surprised that he did.

Silence.

Long pauses, I recalled, did not discomfit Jeremiah Blake.

“My wife is with child. . . . That is to say, it was one of the reasons we decided to return home,” I blurted to fill the void.

“Must be near her confinement.”

I nodded. I did not wish to speak of my marriage. He leaned back and wiped his hands on a handkerchief but so swiftly that I barely glimpsed the two stumps on his left hand, which he immediately returned to his lap. His right hand seemed red and chafed, but it was hard to be sure if this denoted he had fallen on hard times or was simply due to the ravages of the wint...