A Curious Beginning

“And I think we may expect his lips to be sealed upon the matter.” I turned to Sir Hugo. “Everything that represents the danger I am to the Crown is in this packet.”


Deliberately, I lifted my arm higher and held his gaze for an instant before I dropped it into the flames. My uncle dashed forward, but before he could reach the cauldron, Stoker, on cue and according to plan, threw in a bottle of formaldehyde, shattering the glass and causing the flames to blaze upward, nearly licking the ceiling as a ball of fire roared out of the cauldron.

“You needn’t bother yourself,” I told my uncle. “That was formaldehyde, the most flammable substance in this place. The papers were destroyed the moment it touched them.”

De Clare’s face went utterly blank as the shock of his loss settled upon him. In that instant, reason deserted him. He went for Stoker, his hands at Stoker’s throat. The surprise of the attack had caught Stoker off guard and bowled him over onto his back, my uncle throttling him as they went down heavily. Stoker drove one knee upward into my uncle’s chest, sending him flying backward through the air and squarely against the cauldron. My uncle dangled a moment above the flames, flailing wildly. Stoker made a grab at him, catching de Clare’s waistcoat in his fist and pulling him from danger, but it was too late. The trailing tails of his coat dragged through the fire, igniting instantly. Stoker released him and de Clare staggered back against the cauldron.

He pushed himself free unsteadily, the fire a ghoulish nimbus as he staggered towards the windows. His progress was jerky, like that of an automaton whose clockworks have begun to fail. He stopped and started, careering from table to shelves, grasping at anything in his path—furniture, mounted animals, teetering stacks of books. I like to think it was horror that paralyzed Sir Hugo, for he was closest and might have stopped my uncle and smothered the flames. But he stood motionless, watching, mouth agape, along with the rest of us, as Edmund de Clare flung himself out the window and into the fetid green waters of the Thames. We heard the splash as he entered the water, and then a terrible silence.

Before Sir Hugo or Mornaday could stop them, the rest of the Irish seized their chance, bolting out the window after Edmund and diving straight into the river. But the escape of the miscreants was the least of our worries. Edmund’s frantic stagger through the workshop had set piles of papers and tanned skins alight, and the flames raced along, seizing specimens and books and newspapers in their greedy grip.

Stoker turned to me. “Get out, now! The whole place is going up!” The Wardian cases began to explode from the heat, shattering glass and chemicals over everything, the specimens dying a second death as the sawdust within them—saturated in flammable solutions—ignited with a fury.

Stoker shoved me at Mornaday and the detective responded, wrapping his arms about me to hurry me from the burning building, with Sir Hugo hard upon our heels. We reached the pavement outside to find the neighbors emerging from their lodgings, faces either aghast or avid with interest as they realized the warehouse was on fire.

I gulped in deep drafts of the smoky air as I did a swift inventory of my person. Appendages and hair were unscorched, although my costume was a little the worse for wear, streaked with soot and singed a little at the hem where my skirt had brushed a burning stack of natural history journals on the way out.

I turned to Stoker, when I realized he was not beside me. I whirled to see him making his way back into the burning building.

“Stoker!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”

He gave me one last look. “I am going back for my bloody dog!”

Terror gripped my throat as Mornaday and Sir Hugo thrust me further into the crisp, clear evening air, where we were attended by Sir Hugo’s men. They were dressed in plain clothes, not the proper uniforms of police officers, but they were obedient to Sir Hugo, bringing blankets and nips of whiskey from pocket flasks and asking repeatedly if they should attempt to summon the fire brigade. Sir Hugo instructed them against it. He watched in perfect composure as the building burned, his lips pressed together in an expression of detached satisfaction. I could understand why. This was a preferable solution to the problem of Edmund de Clare. A trial for the baron’s murder would have meant publicity. This way, Edmund de Clare would vanish into the waters of the Thames, and his plot would disappear with him. Whether his claim of having a host of men waiting outside had been a prevarication or the truth, we would never know. No one came forward, and in other circumstances I would have been amused to think that Edmund de Clare had bluffed the head of Scotland Yard.

I knew precisely how to puncture Sir Hugo’s sangfroid. “You are content to let Stoker’s home burn?” I asked, not troubling to conceal the acid in my tone.