Ten

AS HE DRESSED at home in preparation for the reception at the Professor’s house, Langton thought of Forbes Paterson, who had poured out his plan’s details while pacing the floor of Langton’s office like a bear in a cage.

It seemed that a woman had complained to the police, and her story had reached Paterson. The widowed woman, Mrs. Barker, reasonably well off and living in Wavertree with her close family, had a seventeen-year-old niece suffering from Bright’s disease, a degenerative, terminal condition that caused immense suffering. The doctors could only ease the poor girl’s pain while the family waited for the inevitable.

Then, late in the evening two days before, a man had visited Mrs. Barker. Well spoken, very smart, and polite, he came with a bizarre offer: to attach an apparatus to the fading niece’s body to both ease her pain and save her soul. His explanations sounded persuasive and straightforward; he had “saved” many people in this way. The fee would be moderate.

The family, devout Catholics all, had thrown the man out of their house. The whole idea reeked of heresy. First thing the next day, Mrs. Barker had stormed around to her local police station, seething with anger and determined to report the man.

“Of course, we had to explain he’d committed no crime,” Paterson had said. “We could only arrest him for assault if he laid hands on Mrs. Barker’s poor niece.”

Now, remembering the look of distaste on Paterson’s face, Langton paused in dressing. He looked in the full-length mirror at his smart dinner suit, white silk waistcoat, and gaunt features. Nurse Milne was right; he did not look healthy. Not like Forbes Paterson with his stout frame and ruddy complexion. But those features had darkened with anger as Paterson talked of Mrs. Barker’s dilemma.

“It sickened her,” Paterson had said, “just as it sickens me. God knows how many poor families these men have swindled. Or worse. And they get away scot-free. That’s when Mrs. Barker suggested a plan…”

Paterson swore that Mrs. Barker suggested entrapment, not he. She offered to contact the man, via the telephone number on the card he had left, and arrange for him to return with his apparatus. The police could wait close by or in the room itself, and arrest the man and his accomplices as they connected their machine.

Paterson didn’t like it but he wanted to catch these men, and he knew that Langton wanted them, so he had agreed. And he wanted Langton there.

Langton glanced at the sheet of notepaper on the dresser. He had Mrs. Barker’s address and had promised to meet Forbes Paterson there at midnight. The Jar Boys were due to arrive at one in the morning. And what would Langton do when he met them? Demand news of Sarah? Of Redfers? Or try to find the trail back to Doktor Glass?

That part of his work did not trouble him. No, he most feared meeting Mrs. Barker’s dying niece. He looked around his bedroom. Not enough time had passed since he had sat on the side of that very bed, there, and held Sarah’s hand while the drugs had struggled to do their work. He didn’t know if he could trust himself. He felt like one of the Span’s great cables wound too tight. Even braided steel snapped under enough strain.

Langton rested his head against the cool glass of the mirror. He had a job to do; he must concentrate. For Sarah.

He reached for his bow tie and tried to fasten it. Sarah had always helped him when they had to dress for functions or dinners. After minutes of fumbling with the white silk tie, Langton gave up. He slid Mrs. Barker’s address into his pocket and swapped the Webley from his Ulster to his dress coat. Downstairs, he found Elsie tidying the sitting room.

“Let me, sir.” She wiped her hands on her apron and reached up to Langton’s neck for the bow tie. A few quick passes of her hands, then, “There we are, sir. You look very smart, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

“Why don’t you take the rest of the evening off? I won’t be back until late. Very late.”

“Thank you, sir, but I’ll wait in. Just in case anyone calls.” Elsie made herself busy, plumping cushions and adjusting ornaments that didn’t need adjusting. As if in passing, she asked, “Would Sergeant McBride be going with you this evening, sir?”

Langton paused at the doorway and smiled. “He is. In fact—”

The horse and carriage that Langton had heard drew up outside. The front door bell chimed. Langton stood aside as Elsie let in McBride, and said, “Sergeant, I’ll be a minute or two. I left something upstairs.”

It wasn’t a complete lie; as well as giving McBride and Elsie a moment to themselves, Langton had remembered Redfers’s diary. He transferred it from the pocket of his Ulster to the locked drawer of his bureau. He made plenty of noise coming down the stairs and found Elsie and McBride standing apart in the hall, both blushing like children. “Don’t wait for me, Elsie. And make sure you lock up.”

Outside, Langton found that a heavy, colloidal fog had descended. The vapor tasted of coal smoke and brine, with perhaps the hint of white flowers. The oil lamps on the hansom cab burned like inflamed eyes. Langton climbed up and waited until the cab had pulled away before he asked, “What happened at the newspaper?”

“No luck, sir,” McBride said. “The editor wouldn’t say where he got the article from. Wouldn’t budge, no matter what I said. He swore he trusted the facts.”

“Then it’s someone on the inside.” Langton stared out at darkness interspersed with white and yellow smears. “Someone who knew about Kepler’s tattoos and what they meant; someone who knew about the money in Redfers’s various accounts.”

For a brief moment, Langton wondered about McBride, then scolded himself. He trusted his sergeant completely; the man had joined the police as a cadet at fourteen, and the force was his life.

“I’ve other news, sir,” McBride said. “When I went back to the station I found a telegram from the Martin’s Bank on Victoria Street, the one checking the serial numbers of the notes we found in Gloucester Road.”

Kepler’s and Durham’s hidden funds. “They traced them?”

“Some of them, sir. The banks don’t record what happens to pound notes, but they do with the fives and tens. Seems that the notes we found were issued in London seven months ago, part of a cash transfer—two thousand pounds—made to the paymaster general.”

Langton stared at the indistinct figure of the sergeant. “Government money?”

“So it seems, sir.”

Kepler and Durham had sent many telegrams to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Their money came from the government. The connection was obvious, but had they worked directly for the FCO or had they been paid mercenaries? Kepler’s history would imply the latter, but Langton had known several Boers who had turned and become Queen’s agents during the conflict. And some of them had turned back again to the Boer cause. Off the battlefield, away from straightforward combat between recognizable enemies, the fight became more complex, more convoluted.

If Durham did work for Her Majesty’s government, why did he insist on fleeing?

The hatch in the cab ceiling opened and the driver called down, “Upper Parliament Street, sir.”

Through the misted window, a constellation of blurred lights. Illumination poured from every window of the Professor’s mansion. More lights decorated the iron railings and gates, giving the appearance of some enchanted festivities quite separate from everyday existence. Indeed, the mansion seemed almost to float in the darkness. As the cab threaded its way between the lines of carriages and cars lining the curved gravel drive, Langton heard a distant melody, violins and piano.

“Find what you can from the drivers and maids,” Langton told McBride as the cab pulled up in front of the portico. “Be discreet but sound them out about any visits to Redfers, or about Kepler.”

“Should be easy, sir, what with them being in the news. Should I wait for you?”

Langton paused, his hand on the cab door. He hadn’t told McBride about Forbes Paterson and the trap in Wavertree. “No, you go home when you’ve found what you can. I won’t expect you in the office early.”

Even as he climbed the mansion steps and heard the cab’s iron-shod wheels crunching gravel as it turned, Langton knew that McBride would probably be in the station before him the next morning. He looked up and saw a stout, balding butler in black tailcoat. The figure stood framed by the hallway’s yellow light.

As Langton reached the threshold, the waiting butler bowed. “May I see your invitation, sir?”

“Sister Wright invited me.”

“I see. Would you mind waiting a moment, sir?”

Langton gave up his coat and hat and waited in the hallway while the butler disappeared. Music spilled from open doors. A crystal electrolier scattered shards of blue-white light. The air, warmed by the latest central heating radiators, carried the odors of floral perfumes and cigar smoke. Two ladies in fine gowns, one of yellow, the other of cerise, came down the stairs giggling and whispering to each other; they nodded to Langton as they passed. He gave a little bow in return and hid the splinter of pain inside; the carefree young women couldn’t know of the memories they had set free.

A door opened to reveal Professor Caldwell Chivers. “My dear Inspector. Welcome.”

“I hope I’m not intruding.”

“Not at all, sir, not at all.” The Professor pumped Langton’s hands and noticed the fresh bandage. “What’s this? Nothing serious, I hope.”

“Just a scrape.” Langton followed the Professor down the hall. “You seem to have a full house.”

“Indeed we have. I invited the most important members of Liverpool society here to celebrate the inauguration of the Span.” The Professor smiled as he threw open the wide double doors and said, “Although my definition of importance might not correspond with my peers’ opinions.”

In the main drawing room, Langton saw perhaps thirty people milling among the dark furniture, admiring the modern art on the walls, chatting in clusters. The men in evening dress, the women in pastel gowns and shawls. Young, middle-aged, old.

“I’ll introduce you to a few of my guests,” the Professor said, guiding Langton by the arm. “I don’t want to throw a host of names at you. Ah, this is Jefferson, one of our leading poets—you might have read his tribute to the Span. Jefferson, Inspector Langton of the Liverpool police.”

A nod from a cadaverous man with a monocle.

“And this is MacIver, one of the chief engineers working on the Span.”

A brief, knuckle-crunching handshake from a squat man with bristling red hair and side whiskers.

“And this is…”

Despite the Professor’s promise, the faces and names came one after the other, a flurry of greetings and handshakes. Engineers, doctors, painters, academics, scientists, writers, atomicists, musicians, actors: The Professor had eclectic tastes.

When one of the newly introduced guests began talking with the Professor, Langton took the opportunity to break away and find a glass of wine. A maid passed with a tray of glasses. “Vouvray, sir.”

Langton had taken no more than a sip when a voice sounded close behind him. “I see you had the whirlwind tour.”

He turned. “Sister Wright.”

She returned his smile. “The Professor sometimes forgets that we mere mortals aren’t as quick as he. Like an enthusiastic child, he wants to be everywhere and talking to everyone at once.”

A good comparison, Langton realized as he watched the Professor dart from group to group, from conversation to conversation. As Langton’s gaze returned to Sister Wright, he took in her long gown of palest blue, her arms and slender neck free of jewelry save for the crucifix on its chain and the silver Guild pin at her breast. Unlike most of the women’s gowns, her dress covered the skin between her bosom and her throat. Someone had coiled her long hair up in a complicated plait.

She began to blush. “It’s too much, isn’t it?”

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m not used to…to clothes like this, but I knew I should make an effort for the Professor.” The blush deepened. “A friend in the Infirmary offered to help me, but I think she went too far.”

Langton said, “Not at all. You look beautiful.”

Realizing what he had said, he took a gulp of wine and coughed.

“Are you all right?” Sister Wright patted his back.

He swallowed hard. “I’m not used to alcohol anymore.”

“Nor I to compliments,” Sister Wright said. Then she took his free hand and turned it over in her own. “Who tied these fresh bandages?”

“My maid, Elsie.”

“She did well.”

For a moment, with his hand clasped in hers, Langton didn’t know what to say.

Sister Wright helped him. She collected her shawl and said, “It’s a little warm in here. Shall we go out onto the terrace?”

He followed her through another room, larger than the drawing room although still crowded with guests, and out onto a stone-flagged terrace. By the light of electric lanterns suspended from trellises, he could see the outline of a neat lawn beneath the snow, and shrubs and trees that merged into gradual darkness and yellow fog. The smell of damp earth and bark.

“The Professor knows many people,” Langton said.

“He has numerous interests and a keen curiosity. He craves knowledge.”

“Of what?”

“Of life itself,” Sister Wright said, glancing back to the crowded rooms. “All those people in there, the artists and scientists and experts, the Professor can hold detailed conversations with all of them. He is an avid collector of people and facts.”

That word troubled Langton. “Collectors tend to focus on one field, one interest. Sometimes obsessively, in my experience.”

“Not the Professor. His specialty is…everything.” As she said this, Sister Wright spread one arm wide as if to encompass the garden, the city, the whole world waiting beyond the seeping fog. Light from the French windows caught the silver pin at her breast.

“The Guild must take up much of your time,” Langton said.

She glanced down at the pin. “You recognize it?”

“I saw its companion on the uniform of another: Nurse Milne at the encampment.”

“I know her well, a good and hardworking girl.” A moment’s hesitation, then, “Your work took you to the camp?”

“I had reports of a fugitive.”

“In connection with Kepler?”

“His colleague. Perhaps also his accomplice.”

“I hope you found him.”

Langton looked away. “Unfortunately not. I would be surprised to see him again.”

“He perished?”

“He escaped into the network of tunnels beneath the Pier Head. Those at the camp doubted he would survive.”

Sister Wright shivered. “I’m sure they are correct. I have heard stories—hopefully fanciful—of those tunnels. Foul and dark, home to pests and insects and vermin, yet still attractive to certain people who prefer to avoid the light of day.”

Langton wondered if she had heard the ghost stories hinted at by Mr. Dowden. She did not seem a superstitious sort, and the Infirmary no doubt kept her firmly grounded in reality.

Sister Wright continued, “The thought of that confined space, all those tons of earth pressing down…I abhor confinement, Inspector. I hate to see anything trapped.”

“Is that why you keep an empty cage in your office at the Infirmary?”

“You noticed that?” Then, before Langton spoke, she continued, “It belonged to my predecessor, a fine nursing sister who nevertheless insisted on keeping a caged songbird nearby. When she left, I immediately released the poor creature and watched it fly above Liverpool’s rooftops. I kept the cage as a reminder.”

In all that Sister Wright said, Langton detected a fine sensibility, an empathy that touched him and reminded him of Sarah.

“Nurse Milne mentioned that you regularly help the camp’s inhabitants,” Langton said.

“When I can, Inspector. And they do need our help. Undernourished, cold and neglected, many of them rely on charity to survive.”

Looking through the glass to the warm, privileged world inside the mansion, Langton said, “So very different from all this.”

“I would not take you for a socialist reformer, Inspector.”

He met her gaze. “I’m not. I simply acknowledge the difference between the fortunate families at the top of society and those at the base.”

“Some do not even see that,” she said. “I’m glad that you are not one of them. We have a duty to the less fortunate, the poor and the forgotten.”

“Does the Professor feel the same way?” Langton said, choosing his words carefully because of his uncertain ground. “Is that why he operated on some of the camp’s patients?”

Sister Wright thought for a moment, looking out at the garden. “I believe he sees his duty and responsibility now. It was not always so. The medical profession is rife with arrogance, the hubris of men from good families and privileged backgrounds, men who hold life and death in their hands every day. I may be guilty of pride myself when I say that perhaps I influenced the Professor for the better.”

Langton could easily imagine Sister Wright as a benign influence on the Professor. A constant presence, calm and sympathetic, leading by her own example. Her next sentence confirmed this humility.

“I admit that I feel a fraud,” she said, drawing her shawl around her shoulders.

“In what way?”

“Oh, this dress, my hair, being here at all. To be honest, I’d feel more at home in my uniform. It’s a second skin to me.”

Langton agreed. His clothes defined him, just as Sister Wright’s uniform defined her. He said, “I was never comfortable at parties or dinners, especially in evening dress; I always felt like an actor playing a part. But Sarah…”

A moment’s pause, then, “Your wife?”

“She grew up in houses like this, with parties, balls, receptions. Her family expected it of her.”

Sister Wright touched his arm. “I don’t wish to pry.”

“You aren’t prying,” Langton said, surprised at how easy he felt in her company. For the first time in months, he actually wanted to talk. “Sarah used to tell me stories about the parties she’d attended, about the little tricks she and her friends knew to avoid chaperones and guardians, or to steal a taste of wine as a young girl. I’d always thought of the richer families as staid, hidebound, but Sarah opened my eyes. She never had an ounce of snobbery or disdain in her body. She thought nothing of marrying beneath her.”

“Surely nobody would consider a police inspector with a distinguished war record beneath them?”

“Some might.”

“I’m sure she had a good life,” Sister Wright said.

“With her family? Yes, she did.”

“I didn’t mean with her family.”

Langton looked into Sister Wright’s open, smiling face and eyes. He felt as if he’d known her for years, not days. He went to speak.

“Ah, there you are.” Professor Caldwell Chivers strode out onto the terrace.

Sister Wright broke away from Langton, still smiling, and drew tight her shawl.

The Professor sniffed the air. “Bit chilly out here, Langton. I wanted to ask you about that chap Kepler’s case.”

“It becomes more complex with each day, Professor.” Langton hesitated, then said, “At least one other murder is a result of the first, and another two deaths may have a connection.”

The Professor moved closer. “And the Jar Boys?”

“They play a part, I’m sure.” Langton didn’t know how much to tell the Professor, who might not appreciate being considered as a possible suspect. Then again, he might have enjoyed the contradiction with the same enthusiasm he showed for everything else.

Langton said, “The strange neck burns appeared on Doctor Redfers’s body as well as on Kepler’s.”

The Professor clasped his hands in front as if ready to pray. “Ah, yes. Poor Redfers.”

“You knew him?”

“Very well. We met many times at the Infirmary, at symposiums, or over difficult cases he referred to us, and he must have dined at my house a score of times. A most sociable man; he seemed to know everybody.”

Another connection, but perhaps an innocent one. Redfers might have used the Professor to increase his group of contacts and the number of men who might buy his wares. For Langton couldn’t believe that women would want to collect the contents of Redfers’s jars; more likely, as with opiates and prostitutes, it would be the men who showed an interest. Men with too much time, too much money, and too little self-control.

As he thought this, Langton realized how far he’d traveled beyond disbelief. At the start of his investigation, the idea of souls trapped in containers of glass or clay had seemed impossible, risible, but too many people had died. Too much information supported the trade in jars. That meant that somewhere out there, Sarah’s essence lay trapped. Alone. Defenseless.

“Are you all right, Inspector?” Sister Wright asked.

“Just a chill,” he said, wondering if any of the Professor’s fine guests appeared in Redfers’s diary. One of those well-dressed, urbane men chatting and laughing. Did they have a secret basement room lined with innocuous-seeming containers? Perhaps one of them might return home that very evening and select Sarah’s jar to paw over, to lay his hands on the slick copper strips and—

Langton’s glass shattered on the terrace. “I’m sorry.”

The Professor waved over one of his maids. “Think nothing of it, Inspector. But perhaps we should return to the others.”

Sister Wright took Langton’s arm and stared up into his eyes. She didn’t speak. Just for a moment, Langton felt his own soul stripped bare and laid out for examination, as though Sister Wright could see every facet of his life, his memories. The thought did not scare him. Instead, he felt strangely comforted.

As they followed the Professor through the French doors and into the drawing room, Langton said, “I feel guilty for monopolizing your company.”

She removed her hand from his arm. “You’d rather I bothered someone else?”

Langton, blushing, said, “No, not at all. It’s just that—”

“Don’t worry, Inspector,” she said, smiling. “I’ll return later. I’m sure you’ll want to meet as many of the Professor’s guests as you can. After all, that’s the main reason you’re here, isn’t it?”

Langton watched Sister Wright make her way through the groups clustered around the room. How much had she guessed? More than guessed; perhaps she knew that some of these men present were collectors. With her experience and position within the Infirmary, she must have watched over many final scenes and seen so much suffering. And seen those who might show too much interest in that suffering, just as the Resurrectionists showed an unhealthy interest in the dying.

Across the room, the smiling Professor moved from group to group, handshake to handshake. Sister Wright respected her mentor absolutely, Langton knew. And what if Professor Caldwell Chivers really was Doktor Glass? Would Sister Wright betray him?

Langton hoped she would never face that dilemma.

Now, as more and more guests poured into the room, Langton found himself pushed to the outer edges. Like a piece of beached driftwood carried on the tide, he settled near the flocked wall, between an enormous potted palm and a bookcase. He took another glass of wine from a passing tray and watched the movement of people, the black-and-white dinner suits, the pastel gowns. The scene resembled one of the Professor’s modern paintings hanging on the walls, a Manet or a Degas.

“Critical mass.”

Langton turned to the tall, stooped man who’d appeared beside him. “Pardon me?”

The man waved a hand toward the guests. “Watch them; a group of three becomes four, then five, then six, whatever. Eventually, the group—unable to support itself—reaches its critical mass, explodes, and scatters its individuals like atoms, which, in turn, form their own compounds.”

Langton stared at his strange companion. The front of the man’s dinner jacket bore a collection of dotted food stains. His tie hung lopsided, and he’d shaved badly, leaving small clumps of grey beard beneath his jaw.

“You’re a scientist?”

“An atomicist, sir. And happy to celebrate the Span.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t see the connection.”

The atomicist stared at Langton like a teacher with an obtuse pupil. “No connection? No connection, sir?”

“I just—”

“How do you think the Span’s trains will journey all the way to America, sir?”

“I meant that—”

“How do you imagine that electricity appears? By magic?”

“If you let me—”

“The power of the atom, sir.” The scientist drew himself up. “Without the generators of the Llandudno station, without the mighty turbines driven by the precise fractioning of base atoms, there could be no electric trains to America. Why, steam trains would have no room for passengers—every carriage would have to carry coal for the journey. No connection indeed.”

Langton watched the atomicist stride away into the crowd. He shook his head and wondered if all scientists were so sensitive.

As more people entered the room, the press of bodies thickened. Langton eased along the wall and slipped through a door into a narrow passage. Cool and dim, lit by electric globes fixed to the old gaslight brackets, the passage seemed to descend. As Langton followed it he could hear music and conversation through the walls, or from behind closed doors. He paused a moment and sniffed. Hot dust and white flowers.

A door opened behind him to allow the sounds of laughter and a piano melody in, then slammed shut. Langton set his empty glass on a side table and continued down the passage. Ahead, golden light fanned out from under a door. Langton hesitated, listened, but heard only the echoes of the party behind him. The brass handle, cold and slick, turned in his hand. He threw the door wide.

A blaze of color: reds, blues, yellows, but above all, gold. Gold in the pharaohs’ headdresses, in the artifacts displayed within glass cases, in the chairs and statues, the ceremonial caskets. The electrolier overhead glinted off the precious metal and made the air shimmer.

The man standing in the center of the room turned from examining a glass display case and smiled. “I see you’ve discovered the Professor’s Egyptian obsession.”

Langton stepped forward. The room stretched at least half the width of the house; pillars of brick and steel supported the upper floors and opened up the space beneath. Against one wall stood the inner wooden covers of sarcophagi, richly painted with the stern faces of ancient pharaohs. Against another, glass display cases just like those in the center of the room, and just like those of a museum. Another wall contained brilliant hieroglyphs, apparently fresh and as yet unfinished.

The fourth wall held Langton’s attention. On deep shelves, row after row of squat clay jars: some decorated with faded colors, some inlaid with angular designs, some plain.

“He has an amazing collection,” the man said. “I haven’t seen pieces of this quality outside the British Museum.”

Approaching the man, Langton guessed his age at late thirties; quite short in stature but broad across the shoulders, with deep-set eyes and a jutting jaw. More than anything, he looked tired.

The man extended his hand. “Henry Marc Brunel.”

That explained the obvious fatigue: The Brunel partnership—grandfather Marc, father Isambard Kingdom, and son Henry Marc—had designed the Span and worked on it from its inception. Their family had practically built the bridge and invented the vast floating city-ships that had enabled its construction.

Langton shook hands. “It’s an honor to meet you.”

Brunel smiled and waved away the compliment. He turned to the exhibits. “Truly remarkable, aren’t they? To think that craftsmen’s hands worked on these millennia ago. Look at the detail on these brooches.”

To Langton, the black-and-gold scarab brooches in the glass case looked too much like the cockroaches he’d found in Gloucester Road, or the translucent creatures that had spilled from the sewer tunnels.

Brunel leaned close to the artifacts behind the glass. “I can imagine those clay oil lamps flickering in some workman’s mud house by the Nile, while the same design in gold might have illuminated a pharaoh’s chamber or thrown their light onto a priest’s holy book at Karnak.”

Artifact after artifact lay behind glass on padded velvet. Worked in clay, gold, wood, bone. Some seemed almost recent, some so old they could have disintegrated under Langton’s gaze.

Langton realized that the Brunels shared the recent public fascination with all things Egyptian. Ever since Professor Maspero, young Howard Carter, and his colleagues had unearthed the Valley of the Kings, the great temple at Karnak, Thebes, and the Upper Nile Valley, Egypt had entered the public’s imagination. Touring exhibitions, readings, lantern shows, and many popular books had started a craze that showed no signs of abating.

When Brunel paused, Langton said, “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at your interest; the designs on the Span give it away.”

“You mean the bas-reliefs?” Brunel smiled. “They take the temple of Amun-Ra at Thebes as their inspiration. Hopefully the Span will last almost as long as the great temples; we like to imagine our descendants poring over the motifs just as we pore over the work of the ancients.”

As they spoke, Langton guided Brunel closer to the fourth wall. He stopped before the shelves of jars and said, “I wonder what use these had.”

Brunel reached out to touch one of the clay jars but stopped at the last moment. “Canopic jars: the most sacred containers. During the mummification process, physicians removed the intestines, stomach, and liver and decanted them into these jars, then filled the body cavity with linen and cotton. Strangely enough, they did not remove the heart, which they believed housed the soul. They inserted a hook up the nose and pulled the subject’s brains out, again decanting them into jars.

“As the process continued, and attendants prepared the body with strips of linen soaked in embalming fluid, the sealed jars were placed within the final tomb, alongside the sarcophagi. They believed that through this process, the body would be reborn, complete, in the afterlife.”

Seeing the expression on Langton’s face, Brunel said, “Is it any more brutal than our own methods of interment? Whereas they used resins, we use formaldehyde. Just as they removed the organs, so do we, in the name of science or research. They treated their dead with as much dignity as we do. More, in fact.”

Langton closed his eyes and pushed down the scream that rose inside him. Brunel could not know his words cut deep.

“I say, are you all right?”

“Pardon me,” Langton said, forcing a smile. “I’m a little…tired. Overwork.”

Brunel stared at him. “You should take care, my friend. One must not concentrate so much on one’s work that it obscures all else. For proof of that, I need look no further than my own grandfather and father; their zeal almost finished them off.”

A fragment of a headline returned to Langton, and before he could stop himself, he said, “The Thames Tunneling Company.”

Brunel looked away. “Exactly. My father and grandfather almost died during the Rotherhithe tunnel’s excavation. But their work on caissons, and Grandfather’s tunneling shield, gave us the knowledge we needed to build the Span. Sometimes I wonder if the sacrifice is worth it.”

Langton knew that almost the whole country, if not the world, believed that the Transatlantic Span would be a great monument; he went to reassure Brunel but at that moment another door opened beside the leaning sarcophagi. Professor Caldwell Chivers entered, preceded by two laughing girls in taffeta gowns. Upon seeing Brunel and Langton, the women stopped and gave tentative smiles.

The Professor stepped forward. “Brunel. I wondered where you might be hiding. You too, Langton. You’ve discovered my secret vice.”

Langton made a point of not looking at the shelves of jars. “You have quite a collection, Professor.”

“A passing fancy,” the Professor said, nevertheless smiling at the compliment. “Although I must admit I had a fascination with Egyptology even before the current fad started. To think that the ancients had such a well-developed society thousands of years before ours.”

Brunel said, “They set a fine example, Professor, but I have to thank you for your help on the Span’s bas-reliefs.”

The Professor bowed slightly. “It was nothing, sir. A pleasure. I’m honored to contribute even a minuscule part.”

Langton turned to Brunel. “The Professor helped in the design?”

“On the British side, we used his motifs on several of the towers, including the very first. They are very striking.”

“What do they show?”

“Pet Ta Tuat,” the Professor said, biting the words hard. “The Egyptian heaven, earth, and hell. The cycle of life, in fact. Panels show life in the fields, then the ceremony of death and mummification—without too much graphic detail, naturally—and then daily rejuvenation in the afterlife. All as an allegory, of course.”

Then, seeing the young girls restless, the Professor added, “If you gentlemen will excuse us, I promised these ladies a tour of the treasures.”

Langton and Brunel bowed and left the Professor to guide his guests around the Egyptian room. They followed the passage that the Professor had used and found themselves toward the rear of the house, once again overlooking the gardens. The fog had deepened, now all but obliterating the neat foliage.

Brunel acknowledged the greeting of several guests and asked Langton, “Do you believe in the power of imagery?”

“In what way?”

“That perhaps certain designs have inherent meaning and power?” Then, before Langton interrupted, Brunel went on, “You see remarkably similar recurring themes in the architecture of the ancient Greeks, the Romans, Incas, Aztecs and Minoans, and the Egyptians. Not so much in the buildings themselves as in the ornamentation guarding them.”

“Guarding them? From what?”

Brunel smiled. “Oh, I don’t know. Fate, maybe. Chaos or entropy.”

“You mean like the gargoyles that guard cathedrals?”

“They’re a primitive example, but yes, I suppose so. Many engineers and architects today are still using the Gothic vernacular, gargoyles and the medieval decoration of some lost Romantic ideal more suited to King Arthur. It’s not really architecture, of course, more that half-world between building and statuary, or art…” Brunel rubbed at his eyes. “I’m sorry. I must be boring you. I’m afraid that fatigue is catching up with me.”

As Brunel went to turn away, Langton said, “Is that why you chose Egyptian motifs for the Span? To protect it?”

“In a way. Of course, the Professor’s designs are attractive in their own right, but we felt it would do no harm to have an element of positive significance.”

When the greatest feat of Victorian engineering adopted the superstitions of an ancient civilization, Langton thought, what hope was there for the rest of society? Even hardheaded engineers like the Brunels, men used to dealing in precise figures, quantifiable certainties, and scientific laws, had fallen for the mythology. Was all lost?

“I think,” said Langton, “that any image has power if people believe it has.”

Brunel thought for a moment, then nodded. “A good summation.”

“I hope the Span benefits from the designs.”

“So do I,” Brunel said, shaking Langton’s hand. “It will carry the hopes and dreams of millions.”

Langton watched Brunel merge with the crowd and realized that the Span, although not yet open, had already become a symbol. Of freedom? Perhaps. More of optimism. The promise of a new life. A new start.

He checked his fob watch. Just before eleven. He didn’t want to arrive late at Wavertree. Good manners required Langton to say good night to the Professor and thank him for being invited, but good manners could hardly apply when your host became one of your chief suspects. There was, however, one person that Langton wanted to wish good night. He pushed through the crowds, through the perfume, French wine, cigarettes and cigars, until he saw Sister Wright standing before one of the Professor’s paintings in the drawing room.

“Sister? I must wish you good night.”

She turned to him and smiled. “Is it so late?”

Langton hesitated. He looked into her calm eyes and almost confessed. “I have work that cannot wait.”

“Our work never can, Inspector. We care too much, you and I.” She took his arm and pulled him closer, then nodded to the painting before them. “I’m not keen on some of the Professor’s purchases—his taste is a little modern for me—but this holds my gaze.”

The painting in oils, perhaps a yard high by half a yard wide, showed a weary traveler trudging through snow and about to collapse into a small glade of sparse, bare trees. In the distance, the silver towers of a city the poor man would never reach. Every brushstroke, every hue, reinforced the cold atmosphere of the work.

“It draws you in,” Langton said. “Although it is a little melancholy.”

“You think so?” Sister Wright did not turn from the painting. “I find it reassuring.”

Langton waited.

“The traveler has a goal,” Sister Wright said. “Not the earthly one, which is beyond him, but another. Soon he will reach it. Soon he will be free and find peace.”

Perhaps she was right, but Langton wondered why so many of the Professor’s paintings and artifacts spoke of death. Was that usual in a man dedicated to saving life?

“I must go,” he said. “I wanted to thank you for inviting me here tonight.”

“Did you find what you searched for?”

How could he tell her? She respected the Professor so much. “I learned a great deal.”

“If there is anything I can do, Inspector, simply ask.”

From the hallway, Langton looked back and saw Sister Wright still standing in front of the snowy painting like a child staring out a window.

He took his hat and coat and tipped a footman, who waved forward a hansom cab. Once inside, Langton let his thoughts range over the evening. Images and conversations jumbled together, overlapping: the Egyptian artifacts, Brunel, the Professor, Sister Wright. How would she react if she knew Langton’s suspicions? With anger? Sadness? Disbelief?

Perhaps Langton’s suspicions had no foundation; perhaps the Professor’s interests and tastes were no more than that. If they really did indicate a morbid fascination with death and rebirth, they might identify him as Doktor Glass. Proving it would take courage.

In the passing haze of gas lamps, Langton checked his fob watch again: eleven thirty. As he thought of what awaited him, a knot tightened in his stomach. He knew he had to do this. For Sarah.