CHAPTER 1
Scotland Yard is of the opinion that we at the Barker and Llewelyn Agency are barking mad. They’ve said it in private, and they’ve said it to my face, but I notice they’ve never said it in front of my associate, Cyrus Barker. I’ll agree we have our share of work that might drive a man barmy, and once or twice I’ve wondered about my own sanity, but only because I continue working with the singular monolith that is the Guv. Sometimes I wonder if I stay because I cannot wait to see the next catastrophe enter through our chamber doors.
One would think at some point I would say “Enough! I have now seen everything,” but generally I am disproven within a day or two. The problem with our occupation is that a shoemaker has for the most part seen everything in his profession and has watched the same problem cross his door frame a thousand times, whereas I’ve rarely seen two cases with similar features, which means one cannot carry experience from one case to another. Everything is new, all the time.
That morning a man had walked in off the street with no appointment. He was approaching forty; not a bad-looking chap, a bit sturdy, perhaps. The fellow was clean-shaven and parted his dark hair down the middle, revealing a small red birthmark on his right temple. He was capable looking. I thought he might have been head boy in his school once. He voted Liberal in each election and had stood for the bar. Later, I found out I’d got it all in one. There’s more than porridge in the old Llewelyn noggin.
He’d come through the door and stumbled a step in front of Jeremy Jenkins’s desk. I blamed the rug at first. It was early, just after nine.
“I have to see Mr. Barker,” he said, his voice rough.
“Come in, sir!” the Guv called. “We are not currently occupied. Won’t you have a seat?”
He came in and sat. I’ve described him physically, but not the man’s condition. He didn’t look well. In fact, he appeared to be in some distress.
“Might I have some water?” he asked, clearing his throat.
There is a table behind Barker’s desk containing a pitcher of water and a bottle of brandy alongside a pair of tumblers. Barker is a Baptist. Water is what one drinks when one is well. Brandy is what one drinks when one is ill.
I’d have given him the brandy, but the choice was our visitor’s. I went around one side of my partner’s desk and poured the water while he went ’round the other to see to the gentleman, who had become quite unwell. I hurried back with the glass while my partner held our visitor’s elbow. The man was trying unsuccessfully to speak. He grabbed at Barker’s lapels and pulled him close so that they were face-to-face. His eyes were starting from his head, and the veins stood out on his forehead. He raised an arm to his throat and crushed the celluloid collar he wore, ripping it off in one movement, while making a hacking sound in the back of this throat.
“Help me,” he cried in a small, constricted voice, barely more than a whisper. “Please!”
“We need an ambulance, Jeremy!” Barker called.
I pressed the tumbler into the man’s hand, but he wouldn’t take it. He fell heavily to his knees, wobbled there for a few seconds as if considering something, and then collapsed.
The Guv and I rolled him onto his back. His chest spasmed, straining so hard I thought his heart would burst. Then he slowly relaxed, the air emptying from his lungs as if from a balloon.
Barker seized the man’s shirt with its twisted collar and ripped it open with a spray of buttons. He put an ear to the man’s chest and then grunted.
“I’ll not have it,” he growled.
Then he put a hand upon the man’s chest, a little toward the left, where, according to my rudimentary knowledge of anatomy, the heart could be found. Of course, I had no idea what Barker would do, and thought I was ready for anything, but not this. He raised his right hand high and brought it down like a hammer again on his left hand in the middle of the man’s rib cage. Again and again. I supposed he believed that this would start the man’s heart again, though I had never heard of such a thing, but then Barker was raised in China, the son of Scottish missionaries, and they do things differently there.
“Careful!” I warned. “You’ll crack his rib cage.”
“Another minute,” he growled.
“I fear he is gone, sir,” I protested.
He continued compressing the poor man’s bared chest. We didn’t know his name or what he did, or why he had darkened our door. He had entered the chambers off the street like hundreds before him and then he died. The specter of death had avoided our offices until then. I supposed it was only a matter of time.
“Look through his pockets, lad,” Barker ordered. “I want his card.”
The Guv’s jacket was on the floor beside him and he’d removed his cuff links. The forearms under his rolled sleeves looked like loaves of bread, and there were tattoos on both: a tiger and a dragon.
“I’ve got it, sir,” our clerk murmured from behind us.
We weren’t aware Jenkins had entered the room. I snatched the card from the silver tray he carried and glanced at it. Then I looked again. I read it a third time, shook my head, and handed it to Barker.
“My word,” I said. “He’s the member of Parliament for Shoreditch!”
“Thank you, I can read, Mr. Llewelyn,” the Guv said. “Pray let me think for a moment.”
I let him think and avoided the urge to cover the body, to smooth the man’s shirt and straighten his limbs. I knew the Guv would want the room just as it was in order to satisfy Scotland Yard. They would find this interesting, an MP falling dead after handing us his card. Even I had trouble believing it, and the Yard is not among our more ardent admirers.
“Roland Fitzhugh,” the Guv read, as if he expected it would reveal more. “Liberal MP for the district of Shoreditch.”
“Indeed,” I replied.
“Damn and blast!” Barker said, banging his knuckles on the floor in anger. “We hardly met the man. We know nothing about him, and yet I am duty bound to find his killer.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
“Ye heard the man ask for my help.” When my partner becomes agitated, the Lowland Scots comes out in his voice.
“He didn’t actually hire our services, sir,” I argued. “He just didn’t want to die. We may never know what he came for.”
Jenkins called an ambulance from the telephone on Barker’s desk and returned to his own as if he wanted nothing more to do with the business. Meanwhile, Barker pushed himself up to a standing position, looking down at what I presumed was our new client, in spite of what I said. It was unlikely we would send him an invoice. I wondered if he had any kin, then decided charging them would be mercenary.
Barker sighed a bushel’s worth of air. “There’s nothing for it, Thomas. You must get Scotland Yard.”
“I’ll call them on the telephone,” I said, reaching for the instrument.
“No,” he replied, shaking his head. “Go to ‘A’ Division on foot, voluntarily. It makes us look more innocent.”
“Sir,” I countered. “We actually are innocent. We didn’t kill Mr. Fitzhugh. He merely died. No amount of thumping on his chest would have done any good. People die every day for little or no obvious reason. Perhaps he had a simple heart attack. He’s young, but it happens every day.”
Barker remained unconvinced. I shrugged my shoulders.
“I’ll be off, then,” I said.
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