“Charlie!” she shouted. He was maybe ten feet behind her still. “Charlie, hurry!”
Jacob Marber’s long coat snapped forward around him in the roar, like a ribbon of darkness, reaching for them.
* * *
The baggage coach in the rear of the train was hushed, dim. Two raised air vents in the ceiling let in the only light, a faint trickling gray daylight. Margaret Harrogate crept slowly past the trunks and dark stacks of traveling cases, the shapeless bundles of goods in sacks, all tied off behind webbing, listening all the while to the faint clatter of the railway ties under the floor and for some sound, any sound, else. She held Coulton’s gun cocked at her side.
In the middle of the coach she stood very still, glancing quickly behind her. Nothing.
“Walter?” she called out softly. “Walter, it’s Mrs. Harrogate, dear.”
He was close. She could feel it, knew that he was, though she couldn’t have said how she knew. She walked calmly forward, her anger dissipating, her fear gone. It was as if she were empty. Shapes loomed up out of the dimness, cases and bags and baskets.
At the rear of the coach she drew the latch and slid the door open onto the rear platform, the roaring of the tracks loud in her ears, and she stepped nimbly over the railing and across, over the couplings, to the next platform. And in the rush of wind and amid the crackle of skirts she drew back the door of the last carriage. It was the Royal Mail coach. The lock had been ripped right out of its casing.
The wind from the open door threw up a million pieces of torn paper and they drifted in a slow descent of confetti inside the dimness. The bags had been shredded. She dragged the door shut with a clang, the bits of paper swirling.
Then through the weird snow she saw him. Walter. Hunched in the far corner, face turned away. His shirt had been ripped off so that the shoulder blades in his back stood sharply and the knuckles of his spine almost glowed in the dimness. He was barefoot, too. She could hear an eerie clicking sound, like knives clattering in a drawer. She moved the revolver behind her back.
“Walter,” she said calmly. “It’s cold back here. Aren’t you cold?”
He went still at her voice. But he didn’t turn his smooth and hairless head. His ears stuck out like dials. The papers were still spiraling around her. The litch was bent over something, she saw now, and as she neared she glimpsed a pair of shabby brown shoes, one unlaced, and a pair of hairy ankles sticking out of them. The mail clerk.
She tried to keep the anger from her voice. “Oh, Walter. Oh, this is most inappropriate,” she said.
He shifted then, he crept across the body, deeper into the shadows. He raised his face, his mouth smeared with blood, blood all down his hairless pale chest, like a great red stain. His long teeth were clicking. His eyes, she saw, were completely black, as if he were still drugged on the opium.
“Jacob knows about the boy,” said Walter softly.
Margaret paused.
His voice sounded like a rope drawn over stone. “He’s coming, yes, he’s coming closer now.” He bared his teeth in what might have been a smile, or maybe just a reflex. “Oh I remember you, Mrs. Harrogate. Jacob used to talk about you. You and your precious Mr. Coulton.”
She stopped, her heart in her throat. She started to shake her head. He seemed so collected, so much in his own mind. It was chilling. The revolver was still behind her back, low, and with her thumb now she very carefully cocked the hammer.
“Jacob Marber isn’t coming,” she said firmly. “That’s the poppy talking. He left you, Walter. Left you in that awful city, alone. I found you, I was the one who found you. Not Jacob. Now, stop this nonsense and come with me. Let me help you.”
He tilted his head then, as if thinking about it. But there was nothing human in the gesture. His hands when he lifted them from the floor left twin dark handprints of blood.
“My Jacob—” he said slowly.
“Has forgotten you.”
The litch crept a little bit closer, the muscles in his legs coiling taut. “Oh, Mrs. Harrogate,” he whispered, tapping the side of his head. “But I can hear him. He’s already here.”
For a long moment neither moved. Margaret watched his eyes. The train rattled and shook.
And then he leaped, right at her, his bloodied mouth wide, his long teeth glinting, and in the same instant Margaret Harrogate lifted the gun and fired.
* * *
Brynt was trying not to throw up.
She was huddled on the rear platform of the Royal Mail coach, her tattooed arms entwined in the railing, the wind roaring around her. There were steps on either side, closed off with a tasseled rope, and a strong door at her back. Marlowe, she thought. You’re here for Marlowe. Get moving.