They pulled up at a tall, ornate row house at the corner of a well-kept street. The windows were dark. There were bollards blocking the pedestrian way, cobblestones shining in the brown gloom. Huddled figures hurried across the street. A small street-side entrance was visible, but Coulton led him through an iron gate, into a high dim carriage house, vacant, and across the cobblestones and up the steps to a set of grand oak doors. He did not ring, but simply turned the pull and entered, as if it were his own house, his own right to do so, and Charlie, nervous, followed. His eyes took in the elegant wainscotting of the entrance hall, the chandelier high above, the dense ferns around a clouded mirror, the empty hat stand like a skeletal watcher. Coulton’s shoes left half-moons in the soft carpet as he set down his traveling case, wiped the rain from his face with an open hand, and went through into the house.
“Here we are, then,” he said with a grunt.
A grand foyer, with stairs twisting up into the gloom. A tall clock made of what appeared to be bone was ticking loudly in the stillness. At the edge of the parlor Coulton paused, blocking the way, so that Charlie could not see past.
“What the devil,” he muttered.
Coulton crossed to a table under a big window. The gloom was filled with the heavy draped shapes of furniture. He’d picked something up in both hands and was turning it in the low light and then Charlie saw what it was. A specimen jar, holding a human fetus, malformed, in a green liquid. It seemed almost to glow in the gloom.
“Do be careful with that,” said a soft voice. “Aborted hydrocephalic specimens are not easily obtained. And where you go, Mr. Coulton, breakage tends to follow.”
A stout woman in a black dress was standing absolutely still in front of the window, with her pale hands clasped before her. She came smoothly forward. Her shoulders were rounded and soft, her neck overflowing her tight collar. A birthmark covered half her face, like a burn, complicating her expression. Charlie had not heard her enter; she seemed simply to have glided, ghostlike, out of the air.
“Aye, Margaret,” said Coulton, setting the jar heavily down. Inside, the fishy thing drifted and turned, drifted and turned. “I always did admire your taste.”
“You’d be interested to hear how I acquired it. It was in the possession of a rather unusual … collector.” She turned. “Who is this? This will be the boy from Mississippi? Where’s the other one, the one from the circus?”
Coulton took off his bowler, shook the rain from his greatcoat, grunted. “How about, Welcome back, Mr. Coulton. And how was your journey, Mr. Coulton? I trust everything was satisfactory, Mr. Coulton.”
The woman exhaled very slowly from her nostrils, as if long-suffering and put-upon. “Welcome back, Mr. Coulton,” she said. “And how was your journey, Mr. Coulton?”
“Plum as pudding,” he said with a sudden grin, laying his hat on the sofa.
“There is a hat stand in the hall. As there has always been.”
Coulton paused, one arm half out of its sleeve. Then, with a calm deliberation, he finished taking off his greatcoat and made a great show of folding it carefully, setting it too on the sofa. His yellow checkered suit seemed to glow in the dimness, like a moth at a lit window.
The woman sighed. “Charles Ovid,” she said, turning her dark gaze on him. “My name is Mrs. Harrogate. I am your good Mr. Coulton’s employer.”
Charlie tried not to look at her too closely. “Mrs. Harrogate, ma’am,” he said with a nod.
“Oh, I’ll have none of that,” she said sharply.
She crossed the parlor and took his chin in her fingers and turned his face so that he had to meet her eye. He was much the taller of them. He stared at the birthmark.
“There,” she said. “This isn’t America, Charles. Here, you will not be less than you are. Not in my presence, at least. Do I make myself understood?”
He nodded, alarmed, confused, afraid to look away. “Yes, missus,” he whispered.
“Yes, Mrs. Harrogate,” she corrected.
“Yes, Mrs. Harrogate.”
“Now,” she said, turning to Coulton, “where is the one from the circus?”
“Somewhere in the middle Atlantic by now.” Coulton sat on a velvet sofa and put his boots up, leaving wet brown heel stains like horseshoes on the lacework. “I left that for Miss Quicke to handle. I reckon she’s handling it.”
Mrs. Harrogate sucked in her breath. “On her own?”
“Aye, she’s capable. Is it a problem?”
“Those were not my instructions.” She did not look pleased. “I’ve had no telegram, nothing. I will need to inform Cairndale.”
“Listen, Alice Quicke can handle twice whatever I can. She’s hard as nails, that one. And the Midwest is halfway to wilderness, Margaret. Give her time. I’d be more worried if you had heard from her.”
“Did you quarrel? Is that why she went alone?”
Coulton smiled in calm annoyance. “I’ve known shoe leather more agreeable than her. But that weren’t it.” His voice lowered. “I heard talk, Margaret. In Liverpool. Before I left.”
“Oh?”
“I think maybe our old friend’s back. I think he’s got an interest in our lad, here. In Charlie.”
“Our old friend.”
“Aye. Marber.”
“I know who you mean, Mr. Coulton. But he’s been gone seven years. Why return now?”
Coulton shrugged angrily, his stout face reddening. “Well, I never read his bloody diary, did I? Maybe he got lonely.”
All this Charlie, bareheaded, still standing, with trousers darkened from the rain, observed with careful attention. He was used to making himself still and unseen and he tried to do that now. But when Mrs. Harrogate let her gaze fall on him, it was as fierce and piercing as before, and he understood she hadn’t forgotten his presence at all.
“Mr. Ovid,” she called sharply. “There is a basin of heated water on a nightstand, and fresh towels laid out for you. I have taken the liberty of acquiring some more suitable clothes on your behalf. I thought you would be shorter of stature, but they will do. Yours is the first room off the landing on the second floor. You must be wearied from your journey. I will fetch something for your appetite shortly.”
Charlie, uncertain, turned and went up the stairs. In the gloom the stained glass windows on the landing were lit weakly from the streetlights outside and cast his hands and clothes in a weird green light. His was a large wallpapered room, thickly furnished, its curtains drawn. A crack of light from the lane seeped under their folds. The bed was wide, tightly dressed. A mahogany nightstand held a covered porcelain bowl, a towel folded beside it. The towel, when he held it, felt impossibly soft. It smelled of lilacs. Last of all Charlie lifted the cloth from the bowl and watched the steam roll up over his hands and wrists like a dream.
He knew Mrs. Harrogate had sent him away to continue her conversation in private and he lingered in his room after washing his neck and face and hands, not caring. It felt so good to be clean. After a while he opened his door and stood peering along the corridor. There were other rooms, doors standing open. He had a feeling there was more to Cairndale and to Mrs. Harrogate but he couldn’t imagine just what it was. It seemed to him he had stepped through into a strange world, a world of shadows and eerie deformations afloat in jars and secrets and soap and blessedly soft towels. The craziness of it staggered him.
He went out to the landing and leaned over the balustrade looking down and then up and then, for no reason he could explain, he continued upstairs to the next floor. Another hall, another door. Charlie pushed it open with tentative fingers.