Fatal Enquiry (33 page)

“Of course they hadn’t. Nightwine gave them a quarry to hunt, and there he is,” I said, pointing to the bed where Barker slept.

“It’s also not good to go about showing everyone the Yard is incompetent. For one thing, it isn’t true, and for another, it is dangerous. We don’t need the public afraid that their police force isn’t up to scratch, you see.”

“Don’t worry, Pollock, I’m not going to start another Turf Scandal at Scotland Yard. If Inspector Abberline is any indication, they have become too competent, in my opinion. Besides, who would believe me? A beautiful young girl, not over seven stone, forced by her father to become a professional killer? It’s preposterous.”

“Was she? Beautiful, I mean?”

“Oh, you have no idea. Skin the color of a moonbeam, with eyes like a golden sunrise. But she had no conscience whatsoever. It’s as though she was a clock put together in the factory with one of the cogs missing. Perhaps it is an anomaly peculiar to the Nightwines.”

“You’ll keep this quiet, then,” Forbes said.

“So you may trade upon it?”

“No, not this, Thomas. Some things are best never spoken of.”

“I’ll keep it silent unless my employer tells me otherwise.”

“Fair enough,” he said, rising. I watched him change from the serious social manipulator to the idle dandy instantaneously.

“Do keep me informed,” he said, shaking my hand.

“You’ll know when I do.”

About a half hour after he left, there was a sharp intake of breath from the bed, followed by a cough. Barker’s head moved slowly from side to side, taking in his surroundings.

“Don’t try to speak, sir,” I said. “You’re in St. John’s Priory. Nightwine is dead, but you’re alive, thank the Lord.”

He nodded, and after a moment I heard his low, steady breathing again. He’d fallen asleep as fast as he’d awakened. I stood and went to inform the monk who acted as a nurse there.

An hour later the Guv lay propped up on several pillows, being fed gruel by Mrs. Ashleigh under the watchful eye of the monk. Barker spoke only one or two words, and there was no volume behind them. I wondered if he had any memory of dying. The widow, who had nearly become one twice over now, provided conversation enough for both of them. I had sent a small batch of telegrams, stating he was awake but not receiving visitors. Barker’s face looked ashen and he was so weak he could barely raise a hand, but when I chanced to sit beside him once, he seized the coat button of one of my sleeves and gave me a brief, urgent look. It occurred to me he had no idea how he had got here or what had happened to him. The last he recalled, he had been dueling with Sebastian Nightwine. Perhaps he did not remember the duel at all. Memory can be a very tricky thing.

I hadn’t spoken in a while myself. It was pleasant to have Mrs. Ashleigh’s kind words wash over us like a balm. She balked a bit when the monk suggested he needed rest, but promised to return the following day. When she left, I sat at the head of the bed and spoon-fed him information, one morsel at a time.
Nightwine is dead. He shot you with a poisoned dart. His daughter gave you the antidote.

Eventually, the monk returned and shooed me out as well. Apparently I was keeping the patient awake, too. I promised to return later, and before I knew it I stood in Clerkenwell Street again. Hospitals are cottony places, insulated against the outside. It’s always a shock to step back into the bracing workaday world and hear dray vans passing or news vendors crying the latest disaster. The sun seemed unusually bright now and I noticed the air was gritty with soot.

I went south into the city and had a chop and a glass of wine at the Barbados. Afterward they brought the long clay pipe with my name on it that hangs over the bar and I smoked and pondered for a while. This death and resurrection of my employer, was there a cost? Had the shock to his system shortened his life? All these demands I had seen him make on his body, were they all being subtracted from the end? Someday, I wanted to see him living on the Sussex coast with Mrs. Ashleigh, enjoying a long and well-deserved recompense for his many years of service.

Afterward, I went back to the office long after Jenkins had gone, more to be able to tell Barker I had been there than anything else. There wasn’t much to learn, anyway. Abberline had been in, requesting information about a certain woman named Sofia Ilyanova. A few people had wished to engage the agency, but had been put off, and some reporters had arrived, wondering how Barker felt about the charge of murder being dropped and the reward being mysteriously lifted. I didn’t respond to any of them.

Where is she now?
I wondered. There was the matter of her father’s body to dispose of. I doubted Sebastian Nightwine would ever lie in a cemetery somewhere with an ordinary tombstone over his head. He had held no belief in the afterlife, but I did not doubt he would have liked a monument built over his remains. Now he would never have a stone erected describing him as the Hero of Lhasa, and it was all due to Cyrus Barker. If there is such a thing as Eternity, and I believe there is, then the Guv had given Nightwine something to wail and gnash his teeth over for all of time.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“Thomas, wake up,” Barker said to me the following morning.

I opened my eyes instantly and realized I had nodded off while waiting for Barker to waken. Sitting up in my chair, I rubbed my eyes for a moment before they finally focused on the Guv. He was sitting on the side of the bed with his feet on the floor.

“Can I help you do anything, sir?” I asked. “I can call for a nurse.”

“That won’t be necessary, but I need you to get me a new set of clothes and my long coat.”

“Were you thinking of leaving today, sir? I’m positive the doctors here would be against it. You’re still weak.”

“That does not change the fact that this case is not finished. There’s a killer loose in London and we must stop her before she kills again or escapes to the Continent.”

“Are you serious? The woman just saved your life!”

“Aye, she did, and I am grateful, but she has still taken eleven lives, and that’s just here in London. There is no telling how many she killed elsewhere before coming here.”

“But she was forced to work for Nightwine, sir,” I argued. “He made her do it. I’m sure she has no intention of doing so again now that he is dead.”

“That does not change the fact that she is a murderess. She must be held to account for the lives she has taken. Besides, if pushed against the wall by person or circumstance, she is bound to use those skills again. She is a menace to the public welfare and must be incarcerated for the rest of her life, if not—”

“If not hanged?” I interrupted.

Sometimes I despise my own imagination. Suddenly, I could picture her with a noose about her slender neck, the pale blond hair pulled up behind her head. They’ve dressed her in a drab, blue-black prison dress. She has been moved about from cell to cell for weeks, never knowing when the final day may be. Finally, they slide a partition to one side, and the noose is there. She’s trussed up quickly and a priest reads from the Psalms. Then the trap is sprung and she falls through.

“Oh, God!” I moaned.

“Tell me you haven’t fallen in love with the girl, Thomas,” Barker said.

“No, sir, I have not.”

Barker clasped his hands and rested them on his knees. “One can train a docile dog to attack, but afterward, it can never go back to its old life. It has become too dangerous.”

“She’s not a dog, sir,” I argued. “She’s a person.”

“That doesn’t prove your point, lad. A human is infinitely more dangerous than a dog.”

“She killed eight people at once. Suppose she sent one of her packages to the royal family, or left it on a train, or exposed it at a station. The carnage could be in the hundreds.”

I said nothing, but put my face in my hands, feeling miserable.

“I’ve nothing against the girl, personally,” he went on. “I do not believe her heart is naturally black because her father was a Nightwine.”

“Do we have to do this?” I pleaded. “Couldn’t Scotland Yard handle it for once? Abberline is a keen fellow.”

“He is, but I’d have to convince him that she was responsible for all the killings. By then, who knows where she would be. No, Thomas, it has to be us.”

“You can barely stand, sir, and I’m injured, as well. How are we going to subdue her or convince her to come with us?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, but be certain to bring along a brace of pistols for each of us.”

That was that. He had patiently answered every one of my questions, but would not be dissuaded from his quest. I left Barker to haggle with the staff about whether he should or shouldn’t be traveling that day. Taking a cab to King’s Cross Station, I boarded the Underground for Elephant and Castle. Coming up the stairs into the bright sunshine by the old public house and the Baptist Tabernacle, eternal enemies, I promised myself that Sofia would not be harmed when we found her.

“Thomas!” Mac called when I entered. “How is the Guv?”

“Belligerent,” I said. “He’s determined to track Miss Ilyanova to her lair today.”

“What do the doctors say?” he asked, coming out of his room. He wore his cheater spectacles, which meant he’d been reading. The hall smelled of beeswax and not a mote of dust hung anywhere, so I supposed he deserved his rest. I knew Mac’s deep, dark secret: he liked to read romances.

“It doesn’t matter what the doctors say,” I countered. “Unless they can successfully tie him to the bed, I’ve got to get him some clothes and his pistols.”

Harm came out of the parlor where he’d been napping on a hassock and favored me with a reasonably enthusiastic wag of the tail. It was only me, the Fixture, nothing to get excited over. I reached down and scratched the back of his head.

“Can you recall precisely what time the Guv collapsed the morning of the duel?”

“They fought for about ten minutes and there was a bit before and after. I’d say a quarter past six. Why?”

“This is going to sound odd. At six-fifteen, Harm suddenly began howling in the garden. I’ve never heard anything so loud and strange in my life.”

“Pekingese were bred as guard dogs for the emperor, Barker told me. They do have an alarm cry, but are you having me on? It’s miles between here and Hampstead Heath. How could he possibly know?”

“He couldn’t,” Mac insisted. “He’s completely untrainable, and has a brain the size of a walnut.”

“How long did he howl?”

“About a minute and a half. I came out the back door to see if something had happened, like a cat getting in the yard. Then he suddenly stopped, and got himself a drink from the pond. I doubt he even remembered doing it.”

“Strange, indeed. Well, I’d better get on. I’m sure the Guv’s waiting impatiently.”

I gathered the items, loaded the pistols, and carried everything out to the Newington Causeway where I found a cabman willing to go as far as the priory. When we arrived, he waited while I entered with the clothes. Barker had prevailed over the doctors, or at least was being released on his own assurances. Having failed, the doctor turned on me, giving me a list of things to look out for: if he looks faint, looks tired, starts to wobble, turns pale, has trouble breathing, et cetera, I was to bring him back at once.

Cyrus Barker stood in the lobby of the priory, pacing like a Regent’s Park lion at feeding time. I brought him his clothes and he changed in his former room. He came out looking pale and damp, as if the exertion of changing clothes had been taxing to him. I knew he wouldn’t admit it, but he was barely holding himself together.

I saw no good outcome from this, but plenty of horrid scenarios: Barker’s weakened heart giving out a final time from too much activity; Sofia captured and denounced as a gruesome murderess in the newspapers; Sofia jabbing the Guv with her poisonous parasol, and he shooting her dead on the spot. It is times like this that I long for a normal situation, like a patent clerk or a shopkeeper.

In the cab on the way to the Albemarle, Barker sat back and rested, marshaling his energy for the coming battle. The last one had killed him. What drove this self-appointed guardian of the city to perform the acts he did? He was rarely paid and never thanked. Generally, he made more enemies than friends. Perhaps I would never understand what drove this man to do the things he did.

When we arrived in Praed Street again, I had the strangest sensation. I had stood there so recently facing Sebastian Nightwine that I recalled him in vivid clarity, the color of his bronzed skin, his blond mustache and eyebrows almost white against it, the honey color of his remarkable eyes. Now he was gone: to a just punishment in Barker’s opinion, to oblivion in his own. Is not infamy another form of fame?

Barker spoke to the doorman as if they were old friends. This was the man who had lent him the hat and coat and had traded places with him two nights before. I speculated he had met him earlier than that, keeping an eye on me when I was carried there against my knowledge a week earlier by Sofia. The doorman informed us that Miss Ilyanova had not vacated her rooms, although he had not seen her in a couple of days. Barker led me up the stairs to the door to her rooms and stopped. He pulled out his pistols and I mine. Another scenario presented itself: me shooting her dead, and having to carry that on my conscience for the rest of my life.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, when he hesitated.

“The room could be awash in ricin. There could be an unknown poison on the door handle. She could have packed the place with explosives.”

“Oh, lovely,” I muttered.

“Or she could have left it as she found it. I’m trying to piece together her actions based upon what little I know of her. Have you any insight?”

“I would say she fears you, based upon her sudden departure the moment you appeared here the other night, but she bears you no malice for her father’s death.”

“Good, then,” he said, and before I could stop him, he unlocked the door with the betty he kept in his waistcoat pocket and threw it open. He trusted me far more than I did myself.