that wasted time, and years before she had ordered me to stop addressing her as “my lady” in private conversations. “Tomorrow morning, I’ll leave early and spend a few hours in one of the oared police galleys. They should have an advantage, especially at night. Unfortunately, they follow set schedules.”
She nodded. “The thieves will know those schedules at least as well as the constables do. Have a look, and then we will plan our next move.”
She turned to Lynes. “We are ready, Stephen.”
There were numerous waxworks in and about London, an indication of the steady growth in popularity of this form of entertainment. Most were temporary exhibits, hastily prepared to dramatize the most recent newspaper sensations. When their novelty faded and their custom fell off, they moved to new locations. The crudeness of such knocked-off displays was readily apparent, and their owners attempted to compensate by offering additional entertainments in the form of palmists, clairvoyants, or conjurors. Of the half-dozen or so permanent waxworks, the most prominent were Madame Tussaud’s, on Marylebone Road, and its principal rival on Edgware Road. These not only were artistically superior, but they offered far greater variety in their attractions, and their patronage reflected this.
Lady Sara considered the best waxwork figures to be pathetically inept, and she was encouraging Lynes in the hope he could achieve more life-like representations. The result was this new establishment on Tottenham Court Road—close enough to its rivals to compete with them but far enough away to attract a following of its own. With Lynes’s undoubted talent and Lady Sara’s critical assistance and financial support, it seemed bound to succeed.
Its opening was only a few days away, and we had been invited to preview what Lady Sara called the pièce de résistance, an effigy of Hob Hagan, the giant axe murderer, who had been hanged only two weeks previously. Hagan was a man of genuinely gigantic proportions, and I had expected a monstrous effigy, but the contours of the sheet-draped figure that stood in the centre of the workroom seemed preposterous. The top was at least ten feet above the floor. “Surely he wasn’t that tall!” I protested.
Lynes chuckled. “Just wait!” he said.
From the care with which he unwrapped the statue, one would have thought it fashioned of egg shells. Finally Hagan’s effigy stood revealed to us, and it was a fearsome thing, a pièce de résistance indeed. John Thurtell had displayed a sneer in his effigy; Hagan turned the furious snarl of a demented wild beast on the world. His huge, swarthy face had a nightmarish ugliness, and his massive arms looked equal to any kind of brutal iniquity. He held the axe poised above his head for another blow, and its blood-stained blade was dripping crimson gore onto his clothing and the turf at his feet. The wax effigies of the hacked victims—Hagan had murdered three people with his axe—were not yet completed.
“Excellent!” I exclaimed.
“Very well done,” Lady Sara agreed. “You’ve caught the climactic moment. The public should be delighted. Did he really pose for you?”
“He did, my lady,” Lynes assured her. “The authorities wouldn’t let him have an axe, but I rolled up a piece of newspaper to serve as an axe handle, and he posed and produced a number of appropriate facial expressions for my sketch pad. He seemed delighted that he was going to be in a waxworks.”
“Astonishing!” Lady Sara murmured. “Was he at all repentant?”
“Not in any way. In his view, the victims brought it on themselves. They shouldn’t have angered him.”
Lady Sara turned to Vaughan. “What do you think, Evan?”
“It is very capably done, my lady,” Vaughan said condescendingly, “but I can’t imagine Hob Hagan producing a facial expression like that, even by request. I knew him, you see.” Then he moved closer. “There’s one other thing. What have you done with his birthmark?”
“Birthmark?” Lynes echoed. “He had no birthmark.”
“But he did,” Vaughan said confidently. “A port wine mark on his left cheek. Just about here.” He pointed at his own face. “From a distance, it looked like a bug.” He walked around the statue. “And that mole on his right neck. Surely you’re wrong about that. Hagan had no mole.”
“But he did!” Lynes protested excitedly. “I’ll show you!”
He dashed to his desk and returned with the sketches he had made of Hagan in prison. He brandished them like a barrister producing telling evidence in a court of law.
Vaughan went to a chair in the corner for a large folder he had left there. He opened it and took out his own sketches, which he brandished in the same fashion.
Lady Sara watched the developing argument with a wisp of a smile on her face. Not only had she known this would happen, but she had invited Vaughan in order to make it happen—I hadn’t the slightest doubt about that. One of Lady Sara’s friends claimed her true talent was that of an impresario. She arranged confrontations in real life the way a theatrical manager arranged them on the stage. There was some truth in this, but the friend failed to grasp its significance. She thought Lady Sara improvised these scenes for her own amusement, whereas they were planned with great care and always with a purpose. In this instance, she already had formed her own conclusion about Hob Hagan, and she brought Vaughan with her in order to confirm it.
“Just a moment,” she said when things seemed about to get out of hand. “You should know, Stephen, that Evan sketched Hagan when he was in prison in York for assaulting some men there. Let’s sit down and compare the sketches.”
We gathered around a table, and Vaughan laid out his drawings. “These were done almost eight years ago, my lady,” he said. “Hagan interested me because of his size. I was living in York at the time, and I visited him several times while he was in prison and got to know him well. He always seemed like a very gentle person, slow to anger. I’ve been astonished at the reports of his subsequent career. He is supposed to have committed one hideous crime after another while all the police of England searched for him. Finally he was caught with the bloody axe in his hands. I still find that difficult to believe. All I know is that I sketched him exactly as I saw him in York, and the Hob Hagan I knew wasn’t a man who would savage anyone.”
“Tell us what did happen in York,” Lady Sara suggested.
“Hagan was a farm labourer. The farmer who employed him said he had a way with animals. Because of his enormous strength and willing attitude, he was an excellent worker. One day he happened upon three men who were mistreating a worn-out old horse. When he remonstrated with them, they turned their scorn on him. What happened next is a bit vague because there weren’t any witnesses. All three of the men ended in hospital, and one was injured critically. The magistrate was disposed to be lenient, because the original offence lay with the three men, but he had the severity of the injuries to consider. He gave Hagan two months and ordered him to pay the men’s medical expenses. It amounted to a severe fine.”
“Was Hagan repentant?” Lady Sara asked.
“Extremely so. He hadn’t meant to harm anyone. He just wanted to stop them from tormenting the horse. When they began to ridicule his size, he lost his temper. He swore it would never happen again.”
Lady Sara turned to Lynes. “How do you reconcile that gentle giant—with a birthmark on his face—with your axe murderer and his mole?”
Lynes shrugged. “Obviously he lost his temper again despite his good intentions. As for the mole, I drew him exactly as I saw
