All That Glitters: A Maggie Power Adventure (Maggie Power #2) *Unedited version*

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

At what exact point Morelle decided to take flight and bolt from the vehicle, I cannot be sure. It all happened so quickly.
    I turned to look to him just after he had kicked open the carriage door and jumped down to the road beneath. With the carriage continuing onward, the open door flapping like a stranded bird's wing, I saw him land awkwardly, roll across the mud and into a hand cart from which a man had been selling shell-fish.
    With the contents of the man's stall thrown hither and tither, Morelle stood upright and began to run from the stall, the roars and cries of the fish seller lost within the general riot of street life.
    Blake opened the curtains on the other side of the carriage and shouted to the driver to stop. 
    Soon the carriage came to a halt.
    Meantime, in the confusion of movement to and from the carriage, I saw Blake and Whitmore jump from the vehicle, and pursue the absconder. I then lifted myself up on the carriage step and could see Morelle weaving his way through the crowd back towards York Place.
    But it was Charlie who caught him. While Blake and Whitmore struggled to fight their way through the crowds on the street, Charlie – using his lifetime experience of dodging his way through crowds, fleeing police and other pursers, I expect – moved quickly through the throng and caught up with Morelle.
    Once close enough, Charlie lunged forward and caught hold of him by the neck. Once he had a tight grip of Morelle, he began dragging him downward by his frock coat, until Morelle was pulled to the floor. He then jumped on top of him and attempted to hold him down. It was then that I saw Morelle's fist thrust upward, towards Charlie's head, with an object flashing in the morning sunlight. Later, I was to realise it was the same dagger he had used to intimidate me the evening before, when he held me captive in his study.
    The dagger sliced at Charlie's head and drew blood. Charlie flinched and backed away from the man on the ground.
    My attention then switched to Whitmore, who drew close to the pair, shouting something to Charlie, who continued to move away from his attacker. I looked from Whitmore to Charlie, unsure where to focus my attention.
    It was then I saw Whitmore take from his person a weapon; a gun which, although bulky, he held securely in one hand. He was shouting to Charlie and raised it high up above his head.
    As Whitmore raised the gun up to fire into the sky, Blake rushed towards him, and attempted to disarm him of the weapon. Suddenly there was an explosion of noise, and a shot rang out, filling the morning air, bringing the whole picture to a freeze.
    It was then I looked back to Charlie, who in turn was staring back to his challenger. Morelle, his frock coat on the floor beneath him, had stood up now and was moving toward Charlie. With his bloody dagger in his hand, on hearing the gunshot he too stopped, like all those around him.
    Except for one.
    Charlie, with blood streaming from a wound upon his head, a grin of revenge upon his face, thrust towards Morelle with the knife he had shown me late the night before. Unaware of what was coming, Morelle turned back to meet Charlie's  scream of attack, and the blade was plunged into the left side of his chest.
    Morelle stood still, upright and tall for another split second, before he crumpled to floor, coughing a thick, red stream of blood, his body convulsing, shaking out its last earthly movements.
    There were screams. Then shouts. The brief silence brought about by the gunshot was beaten down by the roar of people fleeing in terror.
    Blake and Whitmore both ran towards the fallen man.
    I jumped from the carriage step and walked, as if in a trance, to where both Blake and Whitmore stood over the floored man, a thin snake of deep, scarlet blood seeping from his mouth, a pool of thick black blood surrounding him on the muddy ground beneath.
    Morelle was dead.
    Yet another of the dead to catalogue, in a city of the dead. Another of the dead who had somehow managed to cross my path, and who now lay lifeless on a London street, the ornate handle of Charlie's blade lodged firmly in his heart. 
    As I think back now from this distance, especially to those years of adolescence, my fear of death appeared to diminish with each and every corpse to which I bore witness: my mother's, Mr Turner's, all of those children murdered at the Countess' home and – prior to the one I was stood looking down upon – that of poor Mr Penny.
    All dead. In the city of the dead.
    "What on earth were you doing!" shouted Blake. 
    "Trying to prevent just such an occurrence," said Whitmore, without much conviction. "I was trying to stop them killing each other."
    "You succeeded in stopping one for good," Blake replied. He turned away, looked to the crowd, who were now moving back toward the corpse, as if impelled by some unseen force. "Perhaps it would have been best if you had took aim at that lad of yours."
    They continued to argue.
    And I began to cry. For whom? I do not know exactly. Not for Morelle, not for myself, perhaps then for the little girl who would not see her father again. The little girl who I had thought so ill of for claiming to have seen her missing father. A father we all presumed already dead. Or perhaps I cried for his wife, and his other children. They had all been lied to: cheated and deceived. That he hadn't deserved any of them, after what he had done, was unquestionable.
    And how would they react when they found out the whole truth of the matter?
    Blake came towards me, took me by the shoulders and turned me away from Whitmore, who was kneeling over the body, looking exhausted, perhaps on the verge of laughter or tears. Charlie was sat on a box at the side of the road and was being attended to by a woman in a tattered dress. He looked calm, unflinching as the woman dabbed a cloth around his bloodied forehead.  
    Blake led me away to the side of the road, then turned back to the incident. I heard him begin to direct a beat bobby on how best to keep back the crowd of people, now determined to move, step by step, closer to Morelle's body.
    I kept on and walked toward a seller of combs and hair brushes, standing all alone, still attempting to sell her wares, despite most people's attention being directed towards the dead man on the muddy street.
    "What's happened there then, dearie?" she asked, seemingly unconcerned.
    "A man was killed. Stabbed through the heart," I answered.
    "Anybody I should know about?" she asked between cries proclaiming hers to be the best hair brushes and combs in all of London.
    As I looked to her face, I realised she was blind, but she did not advertise her lack of sight as a further inducement to purchase her goods.
    "He was a very notorious gentleman indeed," I replied.
    "Oh, in what way?" she asked.
    "He was a liar, a thief and a murderer," I said.
    "Had it coming then, I suppose," she replied.
    "Yes. Had it coming."
    It was then I looked beyond the blind woman's stall and saw a stall further down the road selling paintings. I walked towards it and saw the paintings on display looked ever so like those Mr Eastman had created in his lodgings. I looked for whoever was tending to the stall, but could see nobody around. I moved closer to the painting depicting Jesus and the Moneylenders, examined the background to the painting – incomplete in Mrs Thornberry's lodging house the last I had seen it – now hurriedly finished in a neutral brown paint.
    "Can I help you, Miss?"
    I turned and was confronted by a girl of a similar age. It was her, Lizzie Eastman – the person I had pretended to be in order to gain entry into the Morelle's home at Hill House.
    "Do you know the man who painted this picture?" I asked pointing to Jesus and the Moneylenders.
    "And who is it that wants to know?"
    "I'm most interested, that is all, Lizzie."
    "How's it you know my name? Do I know you?"
    "It doesn't matter," I shook my head and was about to leave. "Where's your mother?" I asked.
    "You tried the tap-room?"
    I looked to the picture again. "You're father was a wonderful artist–"
    "I don't have no father, never have, never will. Who is you anyways? If you don't want to buy anything, then go elsewhere."
    Nobody was who they claimed to be, I reasoned. And for a short while, not even I. Like the hand which finished the painting, we were all fake, all imposters.
    I soon located Blake again.
    "You need somebody to identify the body," I said.
    "I'm not sure we can do that at present," replied Blake. "He will be taken to the mortuary, then we shall have a full inquest into his death. I suppose we will have to inform his wife," he continued almost to himself.
    "Which one?" I replied. But Blake was walking back towards the carriage.
    "Come," he said turning back to me, "I'll take you back to the station."
   
   
Inside the carriage, Whitmore and Blake continued to argue over who was most to blame for Morelle's fateful end. Whitmore explained once more how he had intended to shock both Charlie and Morelle with the gun fire, as a means of separating them. Blake returned that allowing such a dangerous individual as Charlie to roam the streets free with such a weapon was bound to end in tragedy.
    Charlie, his head bandaged, and sensing the anger of the other two, stayed quite throughout their bickering.
    "You should have explained your plan to me. You and that girl's secrecy is what killed this man," Whitmore said.
    "Perhaps it was the man's own secrets that killed him," I replied.
    "And pray tell, what is meant by such inscrutable talk?" Whitmore asked.
    "The plan was to bring him to Manchester Square, so as he would have to confront his own, duplicitous life. To bring him back and show him who he really was," I said.
    "What in the heavens is she talking about, Blake," snapped Whitmore.
    "I get it now," Blake began. "So obvious," he laughed. "And we could have exposed Templeton-Wells for the liar he was."
    "Templeton-Wells, we are talking of Morelle here," said Whitmore, still irritable.
    Blake turned to Charlie who had remained quiet, as the carriage made its slow journey to Scotland Yard. "Why was it you mentioned Manchester Square? How did you know? And why did tease him with that particular location?"
    Charlie was dismissive and waved his hand,"No point crying over spilled milk, is there?" he replied. "What's done is done. Morelle's dead."
    "William Templeton-Wells' is dead," I said.
    "And how would you know?" asked Whitmore.
    "Because Morelle's dead," I replied.
    There was a brief silence. Blake, I knew, had now made the connection.
    "What sort of gibberish is this?" asked Whitmore.
    "She's saying, the cove I did for, Morelle, ain't nothing but an old macer. The cove that goes by Templeton-Wells also goes by Morelle," said Charlie. "I got you two birds with one stone," he laughed.
    "Is that correct?" asked Whitmore.
    "Indeed so," I replied.
    "What? – How? Why would he do such a thing? He had money, power–"
    "He didn't have the woman he loved, it would seem?" Blake replied. "It's the only reason I can suggest."
    I thought about this. How much money did he really wish to have? He owned a bank and held business interests in many other areas. Yet, he had committed the biggest robbery in living memory. Why? Was it all merely, as Blake had suggested, for another woman? Could he not have done what other men had done and kept on his affair with his governess by housing her some place else?
    "Perhaps it was something more, something different from love," I said. I was thinking of Mrs Morelle; she had told me she had grown up with of a whole host of resentments. How central had she been in this endeavour to deceive, to steal, to murder?
    "When did you realise?" asked Blake. "When was it you were convinced that Templeton-Wells was Morelle?"
    Distracted from my thoughts of Mrs Morelle, I turned and answered Blake. "I was troubled by his daughter's encounter with the strange man in the park. A ghost she called it. A ghost of her father...but younger looking somehow, she said. That description of how he had changed, how he had looked younger, made me think. It stayed with me. When I finally began to look upon the bill poster of our missing banker, it made sense. I began to transpose that description of her ghostly father onto the face I looked at in that sketch. Take away the beard, add the darkened hair...I could not be sure at that moment, but something – call it intuitive guesswork – made me think of Morelle."
    "Then I thought back to the painting. It had been altered somehow. Remember you said the paint was wet. It had been changed somehow. When I looked at this billposter and the painting in his study, and thought of what changes could have been made..." I took out the badly sketched picture of the missing Templeton-Wells.
    "Templeton-Wells had very little hair and that rather striking, grey beard. Morelle had no beard and, I suppose, an artificial hair piece of some kind. I suppose that will become apparent at the inquest."
    I paused and thought about whether I dare tell the inhabitants of that carriage my other revelation.
    "There's something else," I began. "Something that has just occurred to me. It concerns the stolen money and the missing gold from the bank."
    "Yes, what is it?" asked Whitmore.
    "It was obvious Morelle – Templeton-Wells – robbed his own bank, and was planning to escape with his riches with the woman he claims to be his wife. I still think you will find money and gold at Hill House. That is, if the lady of the house is still there."
    "We must waste no time and return to Richmond," said Whitmore. "If his wife is indeed involved in this conspiracy, then we need to find and question her quickly."
    He banged on the roof of the carriage to halt the vehicle.
    "I do not wish to return to that place," I said to Blake. "This is as far as I go, I've seen enough."
    "I understand. It's for the best. Besides, you look very pale and tired," Blake said. "I shall take you directly to Hunter Street Station House, Emily returns from Kent later this evening. Then, I shall bring you both back home. But wait at the station until I return. I'll see that you are fed and given hot drinks. Afterwards we shall collect Emily from the coach."

I slept for a while and ate, but eventually grew weary of waiting at the police station for Blake to return. I left Hunter Street early that evening and began the long walk back to Emily's house.
    A fierce wind blew up Grays Inn Road, carrying flakes of ash and dust in its wake. A piece of grit caught in my eye and, as I was rubbing at it, attempting to remove it from the wet fold of my eye, a man, preoccupied with other less worldly concerns, walked straight into me, barging me off the pavement almost knocking me out into the road and on-coming omnibus.
    I made myself cry; not too difficult when you are feeling so low, miserable and exhausted. It also removed the grit from my eye and, although feeling like I could sleep at any moment, summoned forth enough energy and eventually found my way home.
    At the house, there was still no sign of Blake or Emily. I stood by the front window and looked within. The house was in total darkness. I knocked upon the door and waited.
    And waited.
   I found myself huddled on the step, leaned up against the door, tiredness dragging me into the darkness.
    Until I could hold on no longer, and the darkness swallowed me whole.

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Sean.