The heat of the forge often made being in there a kind of delirium, a fever dream. For a moment, I thought this was a waking dream.
‘Dr Hutchinson is dead,’ she said. Her voice was composed, but there was a quiet force to it, as if not just stating a fact but an inevitable one.
‘Dr Hutchinson?’
‘Murdered.’
She let the word stay in the air, with nothing but the sound of the roaring fire for company.
‘Murdered? Who by?’
She handed me a news item that had been cut out of The Times.
Doctor’s Body Found in Thames.
I skimmed the piece.
‘You made a mistake. You should never have gone to see him about your condition. He had written a paper on you. On the condition. He had given it a name. Anageria. The paper would have, very possibly, been published. And that wouldn’t do. Not at all. So, I am afraid the society had no other recourse. He had to die.’
‘You killed him?’
Her face now shone from the heat. ‘Yes, I killed him, to save lives. Now, come with me. There is a coach waiting outside. It is ready to take us to Plymouth.’
‘Plymouth?’
‘Don’t worry, it is not to reminisce.’
‘I don’t understand. Who are you?’
‘My name is Agnes.’
She opened up her handbag and pulled out an envelope. She handed it to me. I put down the mallet and took it. It had no name, no address, but its blue paper bulged with contents.
‘What is this?’
‘It’s your ticket. And your identity papers.’
I was thrown. ‘What?’
‘You have lived long. You have a good survival instinct. But you have to leave now. You must come with me. There is a coach waiting. From Plymouth we head to America. You will find every answer you have ever wanted.’
And she walked out without another word.
Atlantic Ocean, 1891
Boats had changed.
I had been to sea before, but being at sea no longer felt like being at sea.
The progress of humanity seemed to be measured in the distance we placed between ourselves and nature. We could now be in the middle of the Atlantic, on a steam ship such as the Etruria, and feel as if we were sitting in a restaurant in Mayfair.
We were in first class. First class in those days really was first class, and you had to keep up appearances.
The woman, Agnes, had provided me with a suitcase full of new clothes and I was wearing an elegant cotton twill three-piece with a silk ascot tie. I was clean shaven. She had shaved me, with a razor blade, and as she did so I seriously contemplated the possibility that she was going to cut my throat.
From the restaurant window, we could see the lower decks, where crowds of people in second class and steerage were walking around in shabbier attire, the clothes I had been wearing last week, or were leaning against the rail and looking out to the horizon, with nothing but Ellis Island and American dreams awaiting them.
Of everyone I have ever met, I would say Agnes was the most difficult to put into words. She was an extremely rare concoction of forthright character, amoral habits and restrained manners. Oh, and she had the capacity for murder.
She was still in mourning black, Queen Victoria-style, and looked every part the upper-class lady. Even the eye patch seemed to have an elegance about it. Though her choice of drink – whisky – seemed a little eccentric.
Her name – her present name – was Gillian Shields. But she had been born Agnes Wade.
‘Think of me as Agnes. I am Agnes Wade. Never use that name again but think of it always. Agnes Wade.’
‘And think of me as Tom Hazard.’
She was born in York in 1407. She was older than me by more than a century. This managed both to trouble and to comfort me. I hadn’t yet got to hear about all of her various identities over the years, but she revealed that in the mid-eighteenth century she had been Flora Burn, the famous pirate who had operated off the coast of America.
She had just ordered the chicken fricassee and I had ordered the broiled bluefish.
‘Is there a woman in your life?’
I hesitated before answering, and she felt the abrupt need to qualify her question. ‘Don’t worry. I have no interest in you in that regard. You are too serious. I enjoy serious women, but prefer – when I partake – for a man to be as light as day. It was curiosity. There must have been someone. You can’t live as long as you have lived without there being someone.’
‘There was one. Yes. A long time ago.’
‘Did she have a name?’
‘She did. Yes. She had a name.’ That was as much as I was going to give her.
‘And no one since?’
‘Not really. No. No. No one since.’
‘And why was that?’
‘It just was.’
‘You’ve been nursing a broken heart?’
‘Love is pain. It’s easier not to.’
She nodded in agreement, and swallowed, as if my words had a taste, and she looked away into the distance. ‘Yes. Yes, it is. Love is pain.’
‘So,’ I said, ‘you were going to tell me, why did you kill Dr Hutchinson?’
She looked around at the other diners, who were sitting stiff and upright in that overdressed upper-class way. ‘Would you kindly not air accusations of murder in the dining room? You need to learn the art of discretion. Of speaking about a thing without actually speaking of it. Truth is a straight line you sometimes need to curve, you should know that by now. It is a true wonder you are alive.’
‘I know but—’
Agnes closed her eyes. ‘You need to grow up, do you understand? You are still a child. You may look like a man now, but you are still a wide-eyed boy and you need to become, quite urgently, a grown-up. We need to civilise you.’
Her attitude of indifference appalled me. ‘He was a good man.’
‘He was a man. That was all you really knew, wasn’t it? He was a man. A doctor, seeking glory out of misery, whose best work was behind him. A man who had happily cast you aside and dismissed you previously. He was sixty-eight years old. He was frail. He was a skeleton in tweed. At best he had only a few years to live. Now, if he had stayed alive to publicise his findings, to make his name as the man who discovered anageria, then it would have led to far more harm. And deaths of people who not only have years to live, but centuries. It is called the greater good, surely you understand that? Lives are lost in order to save more lives. That is what the society is fighting.’
‘The society, the society, the society . . . You keep talking about this society, but you haven’t told me anything. I don’t even know what it is called.’
‘The Albatross Society.’
‘Albatross?’
Our food arrived.
‘Is there anything else I could do for you?’ the smartly dressed, slick-haired waiter asked.
‘Yes.’ Agnes smiled. ‘You could disappear.’
The waiter looked taken aback, and smoothed his moustache for comfort. ‘Very well.’
I stared down at my exquisitely prepared fish and my stomach hungrily rumbled with the knowledge that I hadn’t eaten like this in over a century.